Staff at Auditor General's office threatened over Sh67b report

Staff at the Auditor General’s office have been threatened over the Sh67 billion unsupported expenditure report.

This emerged when the Auditor General Edward Ouko appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday.

Kipipiri MP Samuel Gichigi sought an explanation on claims that staff in Mr Ouko’s office have received death threats following revelations of unaccountability in Government.

“Can you tell us if you are safe or do you use ‘panya’ routes and how do you want Parliament to assist you,” Mr Gichigi said.

“We’ve had threats, but we are following the right procedures. We have been promised that the Inspector General of Police is looking into the matter. But I think we can do with more security,” Ouko responded.

The Auditor General said the National Assembly should summon accounting officers who frustrate his work.

He claimed that accounting officers and Cabinet secretaries are refusing to work with his office by either failing to respond to queries in time or outrightly ignoring his telephone calls.

He said that reports detailing Government accounts are prepared under difficult circumstances because pleas for co-operation are met with a stiff wall of silence. Ouko told MPs that the responsible State officials complain after reports indict them for lack of accountability. Principal Secretaries are the accounting officers of government ministries.

Clean accounts

“I ask PAC to refuse to entertain justifications provided after nine months by accounting officers. We should ask ourselves why the accounting officers do this now. It means someone didn’t do his work. We should avoid a situation where people play cat and mouse games with the office of the Auditor General,” said Ouko.

The report reveals unaccounted for expenditure in more than 70 ministries, agencies and departments. Among State institutions that reported clean accounts were the Presidency, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, National Land Commission and Ministry of Mining.

“In most cases, it is difficult to access Cabinet Secretaries. If they cannot pick my calls, what about those of my junior officers? The audit is not being taken seriously. During this particular audit, we didn’t see the right people. They only started reacting after I, published my report” he said.

“The documents were not there and the explanations that were being given were not satisfactory to my judgement,” he said while defending the work of his staff.

“We want to caution the accounting officers. Public money is public money and it must be accounted for. Each one of us must adhere to the provisions of the constitution,” said PAC Vice Chairman Jackson Rop.

Members of the watchdog committee will today proceed for a retreat to study the controversial report.