Parliament has summoned Postmaster-General Dan Kagwe over the non-remittance of Sh168 million that was collected on behalf of the Business Registration Service.
The National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said Mr Kagwe should explain the whereabouts of 168,776,500 indicated as held by Huduma Centre.
The amount relates to prior years revenue collections not remitted and transferred, to the Central Bank of Kenya revenue account, for a long time.
Solicitor General Kennedy Ogeto told MPs that the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) collected the money on behalf of Huduma Centre and has not remitted to the Treasury.
The money was for services offered by the Business Registration Service through the Huduma Centres.
“We will pursue PCK for Sh168 million. We need to call the CEO of Postal Corporation of Kenya to come here in one week’s time and explain the whereabouts of this money,” Opiyo Wandayi, who chairs PAC, said.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu has questioned the failure to remit the money to the Treasury.
“This is contrary to Section 64(1) (a) of the Public Finance Management (National Government) Regulations, 2015, that requires an accounting officer and receiver of revenue to personally be responsible for ensuring that adequate safeguards exist and are applied for the prompt collection and proper accounting for all national government revenue and other public moneys relating to their Ministries, Departments or Agencies,” Ms Gathungu said.
Mr Ogeto told the committee that the State law office entered into a contract with Huduma Centre and the Business Registration Centre was using a postal corporation account to collect the money.
“We were using the Postal Corporation of Kenya account. The accountability lies with the Postal Corporation. They were collecting revenue on our behalf and they were supposed to remit it to the national Treasury,” Mr Ogeto said during the scrutiny of the State law office and department of Justice for the year to June 2020.
Mr Ogeto also faced questioning on how the Business Registration Service contracted service providers to collect revenue on its behalf.The service providers include E-Citizen and by extension Safaricom and Kenya Commercial Bank among others.The Auditor-General said the respective contract agreements were not provided for audit review.Mr Ogeto said the Treasury directed the Business Registration Service to collect revenue using the e-citizen platform. emutai@ke.nationmedia.com
