NAIROBI, Kenya, June 13 – Auditor General Edward Ouko says there is political goodwill in the fight against corruption in the country as exhibited by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
He emphasized the need for all institutions mandated to ensure public resources are protected to work together.
“The President has set the goodwill and the tone. We can see the concern, that everybody including the media are talking about corruption. Therefore, we the institutions, who are charged to work towards governance need to heightened our game, in other words we need to do our work in a profound way, such that we help each other,” he said.
Speaking during the 16th Annual Conference of the Institute of Internal Auditors of Kenya in Mombasa, Ouko said internal auditors should do their work effectively.
“We want to see internal auditors working well, such that their work can be taken by the auditor general, who can then be able to inform the Director of Public Prosecution as well as the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and other prosecutorial systems to take action,” he said.
Ouko said his office is slowly expanding to the counties after Members of National Assembly increased his annual budgetary allocation.
Initially, he had complained that his office had no capacity to audit all the government offices because of lack of staff and little funds allocation.
However, he said the situation has now tremendously improved.
“The additional resources, which were approved by parliamentarians, have enabled me to employ additional more staff and put up some new offices. However, we can never be satisfied and we are still fighting for more resources,” he said.
He however revealed that there are still a lot of challenges they are facing and need more money.
“My office is not in every county and we need to make sure that in future we have an office in each and every county. The nearer we are to the counties, maybe it will me more preventative and be able to curb the cases of graft at the grassroots level,” he said.
