Busia County Governor Paul Otuoma has landed in trouble with a Senate committee after he failed to act on its counsel and discipline non-compliant county workers.
While appearing before the County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) on Tuesday, the governor was accused of not taking action against the employees who had failed to comply with Auditor General Nancy Gathungu to provide documents involving Ksh176 million whose expenditure was not supported.
As such, the committee chair and Homa Bay County Moses Kajwang informed Governor Otuoma that it would involve the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) in the matter.
“In the absence of any evidence that you complied with the recommendations of the Senate, this Committee has no choice but to ask the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to intervene and investigate these matters,” ruled Senator Moses Kajwang’, the chair of the Committee.
Earlier in the year, in March, the same committee had recommended to the Governor to take administrative action against officers who failed to provide documents to the auditors at the time of audit in line with Section 62 of the Public Audit Act.
He had been given a period of 60 days to comply, during which he was supposed to provide a status report on the action taken to the Office of the Auditor General.
By his appearance on October 7, however, he had yet to provide evidence of compliance with the directive.
In his defence, Otuoma assured the senators that he had taken disciplinary measures against some of the culpable officers and would still do the same where it is proved that they failed in executing their mandate as required by the law.
Among the Ksh176 million expenditure without backing documents was the alleged use of Ksh16.5 million for domestic travel and subsistence, and another Ksh38 million for foreign travel and subsistence.
The Auditor General had flagged a further unsupported expenditure of Ksh16.5 million, with the county failing to provide, among others, invitations to meetings/conferences, attendance registers or any other evidence of travel.
She further uncovered the payment of Ksh18.5 million, in which a local tours and travel firm was paid Ksh14.2 million, representing over 80 per cent of the contracts for the provision of air travel agency services. However, there was no explanation on how the firm emerged as the winning bidder so often and the procurement documents were not provided for audit review.
In hospitality supplies and services, a total of Ksh146 million was used during the year, including a Ksh8.3 million payment whose supporting attendance lists did not match with the local service orders (LSOs), and tender opening and evaluation minutes, work plans and activity budgets were not provided for audit verification.
Salary expenditure, on the other hand, revealed that wages totalling Ksh119 million were paid through a manual payroll system involving 47 employees aged above 60 years who were not captured in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD).
The governor, however, argued that some of these officers had previously served in other agencies before being transferred to the Busia County Executive.
