Bungoma Governor Kenneth Lusaka was yesterday put to task to explain why his County Government was operating hundreds of bank accounts.
According to the Senate Public Accounts and Investment Committee chair Anyang' Nyong'o, Bungoma County was running 152 bank accounts.
Nyongo stated that the management of the bank accounts that had a sum of over Sh1.5 Billion as of June 30th, 2015, was expensive and posed administrative challenges.
He noted that according to the 2014/15 Auditor General’s report, bursary & ward development and trade loans collections had the highest number of accounts.
In a quick rejoinder, however, Governor Lusaka stated that of the 152 accounts, 90 bursary & ward development accounts had been closed.
Lusaka explained that the closure of the accounts had been necessitated by confusion and duplication after each Member of County Assembly (MCA) in Bungoma demanded an account,
“There was confusion when we started disbursing bursaries and ward funds, with each of the 45 MCAs insisting on having cash in his ward,” said Lusaka.
He was also tasked to explain why the county had discarded the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and chose to prepare its own financial statements. The move had resulted in an expenditure of Sh581.4 Million being captured manually outside the IFMIS system.
In response, the governor said that financial statements from IFMIS were not prepared because some modules from the system had not been activated from the system by the time of the audit.
