Hillary Mageka @hillarymageka
Senate Public Accounts Committee has called for a consultative meeting with the Controller of Budget (CoB) and Auditor General over discrepancies in pending bills accumulated by the 47 county governments.
The offices of the auditor and CoB have been releasing reports with conflicting figures of the pending bills.
In the 2017/18 county government’s budget implementation review report, CoB Agnes Odhiambo indicated that the counties had amassed pending bills amounting to Sh108 billion as at June 30, 2018.
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But a special report prepared by the Auditor General Edward Ouko on pending bills of the 47 county governments during the same period showed that counties had Sh88.9 billion debt.
Out of the amount, Ouko said only Sh51 billion were eligible while in excess of Sh37 billion were either fake or did not meet the threshold for payment.
However, the team chaired by Senator Moses Kajwang pointed out critical integrity and accounting queries raised by the auditor.
Clarify issues
“The auditor has released a report that the auditors themselves and the counties that were audited do not understand. So we want the auditor and CoB to clarify these issues,” Kajwang’ said yesterday when the committee met with Tharaka Nithi Governor Muthomi Njuki over the Auditor General’s report covering 2017/18 fiscal year.He wants fake pending bills claimants prosecuted if found to have not supplied anything.
