Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has raised the red flag over fraudulently payment of allowances to Embu ward-representatives for meetings they don’t attend.
During presentation of a report of the Corruption Risk Assessments (CRAs) into the systems, policies, procedures and practices of Embu County Assembly, the EAC C found that some MCAs signed two different attendance registers indicating that they attended two meetings simultaneously, and thus earning illegal allowances.
In a report unveiled by Deputy Director for Corruption Prevention Emily Chege, the antigraft agency noted that some attendance registers were not closed after committee meetings.
The report said that this move left loopholes for Ward Reps who were absent during the sitting to sign in and thus fraudulently enabled them to draw allowances for meetings that they did not attend.
The damning report showed that in addition, MCAs were allowed to sign the register after it was closed.
The EACC advised the Assembly to install an incorruptible biometric registration system that would capture the MCAs who physically attended meetings without the loophole of allowing absentees to sign-in at a later date.
Speaking during the event Speaker Josiah Thiriku confirmed that plans for acquisition and installation of the biometric scanners in committee rooms and the main Assembly Chambers were underway.
The EACC revealed that in financial management, bank reconciliations for the County Assembly’s Recurrent, Development, Gratuity, Car Loan and Mortgage accounts were not done in time, contrary to regulation 90 of the Public Finance Management Act.
The reports showed that this occurrence makes detection and correction of errors to be difficult.
The Anti-Corruption Commission also established that some payments were done without examination of payment vouchers and necessary entries in the vote book.
This action was said to be a loophole for irregular payments. Holders of standing imprests were also advised to be maintaining Memorandum Cashbooks which was not in place especially in ward offices.
The report also censured the County Assembly for not having a well-structured system of managing both internal and external complaints for accountability reasons.
The EACC report stated that it was impossible to prioritise areas of intervention, including those related to corruption, unethical conduct, irregularities and delays in service delivery.
The Assembly criticised for using personal emails to conduct official bistake usiness which move was described as flaw in Information and Communication Technology (ICT that could lead to loss of vital correspondences through theft by hackers infiltrating the system.
Owing to this mistake the Assembly was advised to enforce the use of institutional emails for data security.
The ceremony was presided over by EACC Commissioner Rose Mghoi Macharia who presented the report to Speaker Thiriku and Deputy Clerk James Munyi.
Thiriku promised to implement all recommendations contained in the report to streamline the Legislature’s activities.