𝐂𝐏𝐀𝐂 Decries Transactions Outside 𝐈𝐅𝐌𝐈𝐒 by Turkana County Assembly
The County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) has ordered the County Assembly of Turkana to submit reconciliation statements for three bank accounts to the Office of the Auditor General for review.
Failure to present the documents, will leave the committee with no choice but to conclude that the money was stolen.
At a meeting with the County Assembly leadership, led by Speaker Christopher Nakuleu, CPAC further directed the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate financial dealings at the Assembly with a view to instituting criminal proceedings against the culprits.
“You must provide Ifmis reconciliation of the three bank accounts to the Auditor General within the 7 days,” directed Senator Moses Kajwang, who is also the chairman of the committee.
The Assembly operates and maintains four bank accounts which as at June 30, 2021 held deposits totaling Sh32 million.
However, the County Assembly did not present annexures to the financial statements for reconciliation which is contrary to the guidelines issued by Public Sector Accounting Standards Board.
Instead, the documents submitted by the leadership of the County Assembly for reconciliation shows that only Sh250 of the Sh32 million in the four bank accounts was reconciled in the Ifmis.
Similarly, the Assembly borrowed Sh73 from the Car Loan and Mortgage funds scheme. According to the Assembly, the borrowings were due to delay of exchequer releases that affected operations of the institution.
However, these borrowings were not returned owing to budget constraints. Most of the payments for DSA were done outside IFMIS since the funds were obtained from the Fund Account.
However, the Committee said the borrowing was illegal as the law ring fences the funds from such withdrawals.
The committee further wondered the circumstances under which the fund manager withdrew large sums of money and what the funds were used for.
During the meeting it emerged that the Assembly has a key challenge in terms of human resource capacity which has compromised the public finance management.
There are variances between the financial statements and IFMIS balances, Unreconciled and unsupported Bank Balances, unsupported assets, irregular use of deposits and Retentions of monies.
The Assembly could also failed to comply with the law governing imprest management, which was evident by long outstanding imprests, lack of effective internal control audit unit and Lack of an Independent Internal Audit Function, Non-Compliance with law on fiscal responsibility – wage bill, lack of risk management policy, lack of Fixed Assets tagging.
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