• Kirinyaga, among 10 counties, had bizarre budget lines for functions meant for national government
• Waiguru says officers at Treasury have manipulated Ifmis to generate damning reports
Image: MONICAH NJERI
Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru on Monday turned the heat on the National Treasury over reports indicating her administration spent Sh1.4 billion on functions not related to the county.
The governor was under pressure to explain why her administration budgeted for State House functions, free primary education and government advisory services in the 2017-18 financial year.
She appeared before the Senate Public Accounts and Investments Committee to respond to audit queries raised by Auditor General Edward Ouko.
Kirinyaga is among the 11 devolved units flagged by the audit for bizarre budget lines for 2017-18.
Waiguru was put to task to explain the disturbing expenditures captured in the county’s financial statements by the county finance officers.
According to financial statement presented to the auditor for review and copies sent to the committee, Kirinyaga spent Sh419.98 million on State House affairs, Sh851.75 million on government advisory services and Sh176.8 million on free primary education.
“You confirmed that these are the true financial statements, why are we seeing these bizarre allocations and expenditures?” committee chairman Moses Kajwang asked.
Waiguru blamed CS Henry Rotich’s National Treasury for generating reports ‘defaming’ the counties. She claimed that officers at the Treasury have manipulated the Integrated Financial Management System (Ifmis) to generate the damning reports.
“Someone has created two designs for each county in the system. There is one that is only called Kirinyaga and there is another one called Kirinyaga/counties. This is where the problem is. Whoever developed this design must explain because it was designed by somebody,” she said.
She said her finance officers have been generating the financial statements from the automated system which can only be altered from the Treasury.
“My assumption is that someone has developed a new design that is causing this mess because our officers print these statements from the system and they are not supposed to alter anything,” she said.
Waiguru said that director of Ifmis should explain why the system is generating abnormal reports that have now put the governors on the spot.
But the committee questioned why the county officers signed a document with glaring mistakes and owned them as genuine financial statements.
“I agree, our officers made a mistake by signing these documents without verifying, but I want to say these reports are not generated by us,” Waiguru said.
On May 2, Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu shocked the senators when he presented documents showing his government spent Sh2.5 billion on items whose functions his administration lacked jurisdiction.
Days later, it emerged that 10 other counties had such allocations. They are Kirinyaga, Nyeri, Kakamega, Laikipia, Kwale, Nyamira, Samburu, Garissa, Lamu and Kitui.
Two weeks ago, Ouko absolved the devolved units over the bizarre budget lines, terming them "bad reporting”
“It is just an issue of bad reporting or the information was slotted into a template which was not customised for the particular reporting of the county budget. So, you end up with some budget heads for a template of the national government budget,” he said.
“It is an issue of whether the counties spent the money on those items or not."
(Edited by R.Wamochie)