Enforce compliance with Auditor reports – Business Daily
Auditor General CPA Nancy Gathungu. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NMG
The release of damming annual reports from the Auditor-General revealing high-level corruption across all levels of government is treated as rituals.
The auditor documents how billions of shillings have been stolen mainly through companies involved in the phoney contracts.
But no action is ever taken to tackle what the Auditor-General identified as the enabler of the theft and measures to curb pilferage in government. Therefore, we support recommendations by the Auditor-General to have public servants who fail to enforce her office’s annual corruption reports punished.
The lack of punitive action against perpetrators of theft means that they always get away after dipping their fingers in the cookie jar. This eggs on the thieving public servants to continue lining their pockets while service delivery deteriorates. Kenya has a history of multi-billion shilling corruption scandals that have failed to result in high-profile convictions. This has angered the public who say it shows how top officials act with impunity, and encourages graft by those in lower posts.
Few suspects have been convicted from the Auditor-General reports and the small number of cases have fallen apart after the courts dismissed some of the charges, citing shoddy investigations. This is unacceptable, and we hope those charged with fighting graft picked their lessons. Principal Secretaries, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Director of Criminal Investigations and the Director of Public Prosecutions must act on the recommendations in the audits.
