Legislators deny liability for missing Constituency Fund cash

 

The Auditor General’s office has maintained some Constituency Development Fund (CDF) committees were unable to account for cash from Treasury.

Three auditor general’s deputies appearing in parliament Thursday said some of the expenditures done by CDF committees lacked supporting documents or schedules.

The auditors also cited some procurement issues, errors in the financial statements as well as political interference.

“Errors in financial statements attract an adverse report because there is material disagreement. We also saw wasteful expenditure that did not give value for money, leaning towards political influence rather than value to the taxpayer,” explained David Gichana to the National Assembly committee on CDF.

The Standard on Sunday, in an exclusive story, had reported that Sh3.85 billion was lost in questionable spending in 273 out of 290 constituencies.

The auditors said the office had not aggregated all the unaccounted funds to get the overall figure but insisted that their findings on a case-to-case basis were accurate. They said some constituencies had no registration of assets, had accumulated pending bills, some of the bills settled had no supporting documents and that there were outstanding imprests.

Irregular payments

“Some of the payments were irregular leaning to unlawful expenses and in some areas it was difficult to audit a project where both the CDF management and the county government claimed to have launched,” Mr Gichana said.

However, the legislators also sought to distance themselves from the spending mess highlighted by the auditors and instead blamed the CDF fund managers.

The MPs said the managers were responsible for direct spending and that their (MPs’) role was limited to oversight. The audit report indicated that some projects had either stalled or had been abandoned, while others had not been budgeted for had been started and were at a risk of running out of money before completion.

Members of Parliament also blamed county governments and line ministries for abandoning the projects.

“If the ministries or the county governments do not take up operations of the projects... do you blame the MPs?

When the projects are complete but remain unused, the CDF committee cannot do anything no matter how many management letters you send... they do not have the powers,” explained Eldama Ravine MP and CDF committee chair, Moses Lessonet.

The auditors however said it was their duty to bring up the issues so there can be coordination from the Ministry of Planning and MPs can weigh in on the issues.

The MPs said they were ‘stung’ by the coverage in the Standard on Sunday that listed them along amounts lost in their backyards and threatened to sue.