Kingi blames governors for ignoring Senate resolutions on graft, mismanagement

Senate Assembly Speaker Amason Kingi during the Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza's impeachment hearing before the Senate Assembly. [File, Standard] Senate Speaker Amason Kingi has blamed governors over their unwillingness to implement Senate resolutions meant to tame mismanagement and embezzlement of funds in counties. Kingi downplayed claims of bad blood between Senators and Governors, ostensibly over the oversight of county funds, emphasising the Senate's role is purely to ensure accountability in the use of public resources. Speaking during a meeting between the Senate leadership and the Busia County Executive led by Governor Paul Otuoma, Kingi expressed concern that several Senate committee reports with recommendations to streamline county operations are gathering dust in governors' offices. "It is a matter of great concern that you find the Senate has given several key recommendations to Counties administrations, but two or three years down the line, nothing happens, which raises a lot of questions," said Kingi. Kingi was speaking during the start of the week long Senate Mashinani sessions being held in Busia County where all the 67 Senators are congregated for the plenary and committee sittings away from its tradition. He said Senate watchdog committees - the County Public Accounts Committee and the County Public Investments and Special Funds Committee - have made recommendations to governors to take disciplinary action against officers implicated in financial irregularities. The Speaker noted that the committees' reports often cite officers for errors, omissions, or incompetence leading to breaches of the law and potential loss of public funds with the reports proposing disciplinary action, surcharges, and investigations by the EACC and DCI. "For instance, in a 2021 report, the Senate Public Accounts Committee recommended action against accounting officers in several counties accused of gross financial mismanagement with the very little done so far," said Kingi. The report exposed poor record-keeping, weak budgeting controls, and failure by some officers to submit financial statements for audit - ostensibly to conceal irregularities while citing massive illegalities ranging from flawed procurement, inflated payments and payment for stalled or incomplete multi-million-shilling projects to the accumulation of pending bills. The committee observed there was a breach of procurement laws and procedures which may have resulted in loss of public funds, with the audit further revealing that many counties had failed to recover imprest running into millions of shillings. The Senate Report revealed that most Counties lacked proper assets and liabilities registers and putting public property at risk and had opened multiple commercial bank accounts in violation of the law. Kingi emphasised that Senate resolutions are based on exhaustive inquiries involving questioning of governors and their officers over audit queries asking the Governors to take action on their errant county officers whenever asked to do so. "When I served as Governor I used to act promptly on Senate recommendations, what I used to do was to sack officers implicated before I went to the Senate, when I appeared before the committee, I told them I had already acted on their recommendation," said Kingi. He warned governors against tolerating mediocrity and incompetence in their administrations, saying such complacency undermines devolution, refuting claims that senators and governors are adversaries, saying their oversight role should not be misconstrued as hostility. The Speaker also raised concern over infighting between county executives and assemblies, warning that the wrangles are derailing development saying the Senate, through its committees, has been working to reconcile feuding county organs to safeguard devolution. "We have seen conflict between assemblies and executives. I am happy we have not seen that in Busia, it will not be good if the executive is pulling one way and the assembly another since this affects development in counties," said Kingi. Otuoma cited delays in the disbursement of funds, disputes over functions, frequent industrial actions, and outdated pre-devolution laws as some of the challenges impending devolution . "We still face a lot of challenges even in terms of functions and resources, following functions, there is still a lot of push and pull between the national and county governments, which is affecting devolution," said Otuoma.

Kingi blames governors for ignoring Senate resolutions on graft, mismanagement

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Kingi blames governors for ignoring Senate resolutions on graft, mismanagement

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