An audit report has said a majority of county governments have been losing public funds because of employing unqualified accounts.
According to the report released yesterday by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK), counties were losing revenue due to misappropriation and irrelevant purchases.
“The quality of accounting records and financial reports at our disposal by different counties was shocking, a clear indication that county funds were in the wrong hands,” noted Fernandes Barasa, chairman ICPAK while officially releasing the report.
The report further questions several projects that have been initiated by different county governments. It says some of them might have been over-budgeted and also reveals cases of unaccounted payments to either suppliers or contractors.
“We noticed huge amounts of imprest that was neither surrender nor accounted for,” read part of the report.
Other than working on the recommendations in the report, Mr Barasa took all county executives to task in explaining the findings in two months’ time.
“Before we table our final report to the auditor general, we will seek explanations from all the county governments on this situation. These are public funds and every cent must be accounted for,” he said.