The Auditor General hired 229 auditors and support staff in the year to June 2024, in a fresh effort to curb the runaway graft in counties and parastatals amid rising need for special audits.
Auditor General Nancy Gathungu says that the push for special audits by the National Assembly and Senate, which oversees the counties, has informed the need for additional staff, costing taxpayers an extra Sh720 million in the financial year under review.
The hires come at a time when Kenya has witnessed a surge in the theft of public funds across the devolved units in a looting spree that has been minting overnight millionaires.
For years, the Auditor General has lamented the limitations of resources, including personnel and funding, as she seeks to tighten scrutiny of entrenched corruption in state entities and devolved units.
“The Office of the Auditor General has critical staff gaps, especially given the expanding scope (hospitals, secondary schools, Tvets and requests from the National Assembly and the Senate for special audits) and also natural attrition that call for regular staff recruitment,” Ms Gathungu wrote in an emailed response to the Business Daily.
“The recruitments will enable us to form more teams to improve on our audit timelines with the objective of improving on efficiency and coverage of audit work.”
Counties, especially, have over the years been embroiled in corruption scandals that involve diversion of funds as well as violation of established procurement processes.
Payroll fraud has also emerged as a common underhand scheme employed by county authorities. Ms Gathungu has repeatedly flagged irregularities such as shared names on the payroll, unlawful promotions and fictitious payments to ghost workers in multiple counties.
In the latest audit report for the devolved units, for instance, the auditor general raised a red flag about eight county governments that hired thousands of staff without following the due process, which includes advertising vacancies, shortlisting candidates and conducting interviews.
This year alone, at least three governors have seen their residences raided by anti-graft officers as part of investigations into alleged corrupt dealings – Bomet’s Hillary Barchok, Kimani Wamatangi of Kiambu and George Natembeya of Trans Nzoia.
This has been in addition to the conviction of Kiambu ex-governor Ferdinand Waititu, who has remained behind bars after a court found him guilty of receiving kickbacks from a contractor for a Sh588 million roads tender.
Ms Gathungu has decried budgetary constraints and the lack of necessary resources for staff, saying that this has slowed the desired recruitment pace, as she can only hire a few staff members each year.
She has appealed for enhanced funding from the National Treasury and Parliament, noting that her client base has now grown to 12,784 entities.
“Our audit universe has been increasing and now comprises 12,784 clients. We have new public sector entities such as hospitals and schools that are now self-accounting and required to prepare financial statements for audit,” she wrote in her latest annual report.
Other challenges cited in the report include delays by Parliament in discussing performance audit reports and low implementation of audit recommendations, as well as tight audit timelines.
The office notes, for instance, that a total of 63 performance audits have been submitted to Parliament since 2012, but only one has been discussed thus far.
