Security Committee Meets Office of the President Officials Over Budget Implementation Status
The Departmental Committee on Administration and Internal Security today engaged two Departments based in the Office of the President,
to get a status update on budget implementation status.
The engagement which covers an assessment on budget absorption against budget allocations to various projects, focused on the first quarter of the 2023/2024 Financial Year.
First to brief the Hon. Gabriel Tongoyo-led Committee was the State House Comptroller Hon. Katoo Ole Metito. The lawmakers put him on the spot over the discrepancies between pending bills as reported by the Controller of Budget on her annual report to Parliament and the report submitted by the office of the President on Vote 1011 and which is currently before the Committee.
The Comptroller in his presentation highlighted several issues that led to the variance including timelines in presenting the report to the controller of Budget and Parliament.
“There was a time gap and some bills were later factored in. In the report submitted to Parliament, an amount of Kshs. 28,863,700 had been captured twice. The report also failed to include historical pending bills. Further, an amount of Ksh 6,576,577 comprising Ksh 2,659,566 for recurrent expenditure and Ksh 4,007,011 for Development expenditure -being a current pending bill was also incorporated as part of the total pending bill through the ongoing verification process”, Hon. Katoo sought to explain.
Later, the Principal Secretary State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services Amb(Prof) Julius K. Bitok appeared before the Committee to address the status report which includes a detailed explanation of the non-financial performance of the State Department based on the approved program-based budget for the FY 2022/23 as contained on vote 1021 and 1024. The Members also expressed concerns over Policy shift about the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) Project and the status of implementation of other state projects.
In his presentation, PS Bitok remarks on the non-financial performance and pointed out several setbacks that led the Department not achieving some of its targets including inadequate funding and budget cuts, shortage of supplies for materials such as ID materials, passport booklets, Inadequate registration material.
He further pointed out some operational and administrative challenges faced by the Department , including low printing capacity for passports due to occasional break down of Printers.
With regards to the Policy Shift, the PS told the Committee that the Department had adopted the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) “Maisha Namba” as a key integration to address concerns about data privacy, security as well as potential misuse of personal information, loopholes identified in the Huduma Namba. The UPI will see Kenyans enrolled in the system at birth and exit upon death.
With regards to the status of implementation of the rest of the project within the State Department, the PS told the Committee that good progress had been recorded, adding that those that had stalled had been affected by the Policy shift, budget cuts, or insufficient allocation of funds.
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