A watchdog Committee has asked State Departments to speed up the verification of pending bills so as to pave way for timely payments to contractors.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chaired by John Mbadi blamed the delay in verification of the pending bills for the accumulation of the huge amounts of debts owed to contractors and suppliers.
"Reports from the Auditor General tabled before this Committee has revealed that one of the reasons why most State Departments had pending bills worth billions of shillings is because finance officers were taking too long to verify them," Mbadi said.
He added that as a result, most of the contractors who had provided services to the government were subjected to suffering for mistakes that were not theirs.
Mbadi said that the Committee has noted with concern that some finance officers were deliberately delaying the pending bills verification process to punish some contractors.
The Chairperson questioned why the Departments would buy a lot of time verifying the pending bills if they were correctly keeping financial records.
"Although the Committee is in support of verification of the pending bills before payment is made, the exercise should not take too long as witnessed," he said.
Mbadi made the remarks when the East African Cooperation PS Abdi Dubat appeared before the committee.
Dubat responded to audit queries for the Financial Year ended June 2021 at Parliament Building.
The Committee questioned why the department had not paid pending bills amounting to Sh13 million.
In his submission, the PS told the Committee that one of the reasons that caused the delay in settling the pending bills was the verification process which took longer than expected.
He, however, explained that all the pending bills had been verified and will be settled starting this week.
"The Department has completed the verification process of the pending bills and contractors will start to receive their money starting this week," Dubat said.
He noted that he had taken seriously the advice from the Committee and will ensure that going forward contractors were paid their dues without hitches.
