Posta House in Nairobi’s CBD/ The Star
NAIROBI, Kenya Feb 22- Postmaster-General Dan Kagwe has come under fire over Sh168 million collected by Posta on behalf of the Business Registration Service.
Parliament, through the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), summoned Kagwe to explain why the postal corporation failed to remit Sh168,776,500 held by Huduma Centre.
“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,” PAC chair Opiyo Wandayi said.
The money is revenue collected over the past year which should have been transferred to the Central Bank of Kenya revene account.
Solicitor General Kennedy Ogeto told MPs that the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) collected the money on behalf of Huduma Centre and is yet to remit the cash to the National Treasury.
The money was for services offered by the Business Registration Service through the Huduma Centres.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu has also questioned Posta’s failure to remit the money to 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,” Gathungu said.
Ogeto told the committee that the state law office entered into a contract with Huduma Centre that saw the Business Registration Centre using one of posta’s accounts to collect the revenue.
“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,” Ogeto said during the scrutiny of the State law office and department of Justice for the year to June 2020.
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.
Ogeto said the National Treasury directed the Business Registration Service to collect revenue using the e-citizen platform.
