- The government house rents were last reviewed in the year 2001 and are therefore not aligned to current market rent rates.
- However, civil servants’ house allowances rates have been reviewed severally to reflect the cost of living.
Image: EZEKIEL AMING'A
The Housing Department collected only half of the rent expected from state houses, auditor general Nancy Gathungu says.
The report for the 2019-2020 financial year shows the department collected Sh724 million or 52 per cent of the potential from 56,892 national government houses across the country.
It said the department has the potential of collecting Sh1.52 billion annually or Sh127 million monthly, assuming full occupancy.
It added that for the national government houses occupied by county government staff, Sh113 million deductions were made through respective payrolls but only Sh16 million was remitted to the department.
This resulted into unremitted revenue of Sh97 million.
“The State Department failed to put in place measures to ensure that all rent income due was collected in accordance with Regulation 43(c) of the Public Finance Management (National Government) Regulations, 2015.
"The law requires an accounting officer to ensure that all Appropriations-In-Aid due to a national government entity are collected and properly accounted for in accordance with the relevant laws, rules and regulations,” the report said.
Gathungu pointed out that regulation 43 (d) provides that an accounting officer shall manage, control and ensure that policies are carried out efficiently and wastage of public funds is eliminated.
However, the government house rents were last reviewed in the year 2001 and are therefore not aligned to current market rent rates.
This is despite the civil servants’ house allowances having been reviewed severally to reflect the cost of living and the market rates for the rent.
"Consequently, the government is losing out on revenue with the continued application of outdated rental rates,” she stated.
Gathungu further said the inventory of houses availed for audit review showed government houses had been categorised into institutional, police and pool houses.
She added that the houses were further categorised into low, medium and high grades.
“However, the register maintained by the State Department did not contain key information such as the dates of occupancy and vacancy, occupants’ details and reason for non-occupancy.
"The register was also incomplete as some police houses were not included,” she said.
Gathungu said failure to maintain a comprehensive register makes it difficult to keep track of government houses and tenants in relation to occupancy, vacancy of the houses, houses with rent arrears and their respective maintenance costs.
The report said that the construction of 100 housing units at Emali Administration Police Training Camp at a cost of Sh136.7 million had been abandoned at 85 per cent completion.
The management has not provided any evidence of efforts towards resumption of works.
The report also revealed a budget deficit of Sh387 million.
The summary statement of appropriation-recurrent and development combined reflected actual receipts of Sh25.79 billion and actual expenditure of Sh26.17 billion.
This, the report said was contrary to Regulation 33(e) of the Public Finance Management (National Governments) Regulations, 2015 which provides that the total budget revenue shall cover the total budget expenditure.
The report further said financial statements reflected pending bills amounting to Sh1.18 billion which include Sh749 million brought forward from 2018-2019 financial year.
(Edited by Bilha Makokha)