Nairobi county executive in the spot for audit queries

The city’s finance executive was yesterday accused of employing delaying tactics to avoid answering financial audit queries.

Members of the county assembly’s public accounts committee took to task the executive, Vesca Kangogo, over her late response.

The committee hinted that the Auditor General had raised queries about discrepancies between the county’s ledgers and its financial statements.

Kangogo yesterday appeared before the committee, where she was expected to present the responses to the Auditor General’s queries. The acting chairman of the county public accounts committee, Moses Ogeto, asked why the responses were submitted late.

Ogeto accused Kangogo of trying to slow down the committee’s report-writing process. The team is supposed to submit its report to the county assembly in two weeks.

“Kangongo and her team claim that they are new in office and that it is the reason for the delay in providing information, but that to me is incompetence. She has been in office for some months and should be able to provide relevant documentation,” said Ogeto.

“Their aim is to delay the report so that it is not tabled within two weeks so that it can ‘die’. They were to present the documents before coming to the committee but only submitted them today so that we do not have time to scrutinise them.”

But Ms Kangogo said: “We have to ensure that whatever we present to the committee is true and factual. That might require time,” she said.

She added that the queries being raised were for the 2015-2016 financial year, when she was not yet in office. The meeting was adjourned to Tuesday to allow the committee to scrutinise the documents.