The Senate’s County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) has launched a plan aimed at ending the huge backlog of the Auditor General’s reports for the County Governments.

The backlog dates back to five financial years and the committee is wants to clear out and make them real time.

To achieve this, the committee has designed a plan to increase the frequency of its meetings so as to expedite the process.

The 9-member committee has decided to split itself into two for the purposes of grilling accounting officers from both the county executive and assembly in the hope this will help reduce the backlog, which date back to the 2019/20 financial year.

The move is already being piloted and on Monday saw the committee grill accounting officers from four county assemblies – Migori, Marsabit, Nandi and Nyamira – as it rolled out the plan that should it succeed, could revolutionise the process of accountability.

On the first day of this ambitious plan, the meeting between the Committee and Migori County Assembly was adjourned prematurely after it emerged that most of the documents related to auditing had been seized by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) who are investigating some criminal acts at the assembly.

However, the committee ordered the Speaker Owino Likowa to write to the DCI seeking certified copies of the documents that were seized to allow the Senate to execute its mandate.

During the meeting with Nandi County Assembly, Speaker Philemon Melly defended the decision by the Assembly to pay Sh5.9 million as subscription to the County Assemblies Forum (CAF), saying that the payment was made necessary because of its affiliation to the body.

“The subscription is budgeted in the Assembly’s budget and subsequently approved by the County Assembly Service Board in the overall budget of the county as per the County Government Act,” said the Speaker.

In her report, auditor general Nancy Gathungu had questioned the payment arguing that CAF is not a registered entity recognized by the law.

Ms Gathungu said the management of the County Assembly had not provided evidence of the payment including the legal backing of the payment.

But Speaker Melly told the committee that the Assembly that since 2021/22 financial year, the Assembly had stopped further payments until the CAF complies with the law in line with the recommendation of the Auditor general.

Similar query was picked in the audit report of Marsabit County Assembly where the Assembly paid Sh1.4 million in respect of membership fees, dues and subscriptions paid to the CAF and to the Society of Clerks at The Table (SOCATT).

According to the Audit report, Sh300,000 was paid as annual subscription to the CAF while another Sh600,000 was due to the same body, Sh500, 000 was paid to SOCATT.

“Both CAF) and SOCATT are registered societies under the Societies Act. These two entities are very valuable for all 47 County Assemblies,” said Speaker Edin Wario Dida while defending the payment.

He said CAF promotes networking as well as coordinating inter-governmental relations in Kenya through institutionalization of the law-making process in the Counties, representation, advancement of oversight capacities of County assemblies, the linkage with National government and stake holders who include general public.

 SOCATT champions for the welfare of clerks of the legislative arms of the government and its main objective being to harmonize the County Assemblies operation, capacity development of both members and staff of County Assemblies.

Nyamira County Assembly Speaker Enock Okero also appeared before the committee where he defended its 2019/20 revenue and expenditure accounts.