Donors should make public their conditions for the grants, donations and loans to the government to support Covid-19 efforts to foster accountability, civil society groups have said.
More than 20 civil society groups and trade unions on Tuesday urged international organisations and foreign diplomatic missions to demand the government publishes how it has handled the money received for Covid-19 and how it was used.
They were led by Transparency International, Amnesty International and the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
The groups told a news conference at KHRC headquarters in Nairobi that the government has been opaque in handling the funds and is hostile to demands for transparency and accountability.
They demanded the United Nations should d “make public on their websites and other platforms the nature of technical support that they are providing and can further provide to the national and county governments to ensure transparency and accountability in the current pandemic.”
The lobbies want the Auditor General to conduct an independent audit of all funds advanced for response to the virus and publish how the receiving institutions, including the county governments, used them.
Besides fast-tracking the arrest and prosecution of the suspects in the misuse of the pandemic money, the lobbies also want the investigative authorities and the ODPP to "set up a live dashboard on the status of all cases relating to Covid-19 corruption so that all Kenyans are able to monitor the progress of these cases."
Further, they demand that Assets Recovery Agency freezes accounts of individuals suspected to have irregularly been allocated money or received Covid-19 tenders to recover the funds.
Moreover, the lobbies said Treasury CS Ukur Yattani should publish detailed expenditure information on all funds advanced for the virus response efforts.
"All government agencies must, as a matter of right to information, proactively publish the names of companies and their beneficial owners, and individuals awarded any contracts for Covid-19-related commodities or services and the contract amounts, at national and county levels on the Public Procurement Information Portal," they said.
In addition, they said, the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority must publish a market price index of all essential drugs and commodities required for the management and response to Covid-19 to prevent inflation of costs.
(Edited by Henry Makori)
