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The Office of the Auditor General wants financial culpability be placed on individuals and not institutions in a new move meant to reduce financial impropriety in government.

Auditor General Nancy Gathungu said audit reports have been placing accounting responsibility on the institution and not on an individual, adding that some people in the offices responsible die before the investigations into their acts of omission or commission are established.\

She disclosed that the office has made recommendations to National Assembly and Treasury that accounting responsibility be placed on a specific individual rather than an institution.
Financial management

“Go for the persons embezzling the funds, not an institution,” said Gathungu during a stakeholders’ sensitisation forum on the Public Financial Management Reporting Framework at a Nairobi hotel.

She said that her office has adopted the use of the Public Financial Management (PFM) Reporting Framework tool, and a focused pilot was done in the National Treasury, Parliament, and Kenya Revenue Authority and Ministries of Education, Transport, Health, Water, Energy & Petroleum and Agriculture.

Gathungu explained that the PFM Reporting Framework tool does not replace the existing PFM diagnostic frameworks. “The PFM-RF Tool is a value-adding tool in oversight of public financial management. It requires the public sector auditor to think beyond ‘normal audit’ and dig or research deeper to analyze root causes. It enables the provision of timely information and effective monitoring and control of public finance,” she said.

According to Gathungu, the move to accrual accounting, and the establishment of effective internal audit units will bring about change, adding that her office will ensure that public finance management system is transparent, efficient, credible, and reliable to enable accountable management of the limited public resources.

For Kenyans to get value for money, she said that all public funds must be audited so that the Kenyan people get value for money.

“We will ensure that we audit all the funds whether borrowed internally or externally to fund development projects. We will trace the money from the source until we get what the money did,” said Gathungu. Last year, Gathungu exposed how State officers failed to maximize the use of public funds for the intended purpose. Gathungu, in an audit report, revealed worrying trends in how State departments, ministries and agencies used the Sh3.33 trillion budget that was set aside for the financial year ended June 2021. –