A committee of the Senate has given Governor Issa Timamy of Lamu County 60 days to submit a report detailing practical and verifiable steps being taken by the county to build capacity for the management of Integrated Finance Management Information System (IFMIS).

The County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) further directed the Governor to furnish details he is putting in place to automate the collection of Own Source Revenue, an ICT Policy and risk management framework.

“You must develop the roadmap and submit the report to the Office of Auditor General in the next 60 days,” said Senator Moses Kajwang’, the chairman of the committee, adding that the County must demonstrate compliance with Public Finance Management (County) regulations, dealing with the management of revenue and receipts.

The committee was forced to issue the directive after it emerged that collection of Own Source Revenue (OSR) remains largely manual and that Lamu is the only county that is not on the main public financial platform, IFMIS.

According to the Auditor General report for the 2020/21 financial year, the county revenue and expenditures receipts had huge variance in the counties.

According to the report of the Auditor General for the county in the 2020/21 financial year, the County Executive did not provide detailed schedules of the revenue collection indicating the name of the payee, receipt or transaction numbers and the specific amounts collected manually.

The report says the receipts were lumped together and were not classified as per the revenue collector.

A review of the sampled permits attached in the payment records indicated that the County was using a series of business permits receipts books that were issued in the year 2015 and have never been returned.

“There were cases of business permits with the same serial number indicating that parallel permits were being used and hence pilferage of revenue. 

While he insisted that Lamu is on IFMIS, the Governor revealed that the county had collected revenue amounting to Sh108 million manually adding that the payments were supported by monthly reports.

The County also paid Sh54 million to three companies for the supply of a digital revenue collection system and an additional Sh285,000 for consultancy and maintenance per year.

However, the system was abandoned the platform and reverted to manual system soon after, yet there was no official communication authorizing the use of manual system and there was no explanation provided as to why the automated system was abandoned.

The Governor could not submit evidence of the termination.

Senator Cherarkey said there was no due diligence before the digital platform was procured and demanded that the county presents signed agreements that led to the deal.