Parliament demands special audit on e-Citizen platform

Parliament wants Auditor-General Edward Ouko to conduct a special scrutiny of the e-Citizen platform to establish the amount of money that the government has collected through the system since its inception

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) asked Mr Ouko to probe the government web-based platforms over the unremitted revenue collected through the Huduma Centre and e-Citizen.

Mr Ouko has three months to conduct the audit once Parliament approves the report on the examination of audited financial statements of national government for the year 2015/16.

The government digital payments platform allows citizens and visitors to access and pay for all government services online.

The services include Kenya Revenue Authority payments, registration of business, marriages, driving licences, land rates or rent, immigration and civil registration services.

“The committee recommends that the Auditor-General should undertake a special audit of the e-Citizen platform within three months of adoption of this report, with a view to determining how much money has been collected through the platform since inception, how much revenue has been remitted to the various government agencies using the platform for service delivery and the possible factors contributing to the non-remittance,” Opiyo Wandayi, who chairs PAC, said in a report.

The committee also wants Mr Ouko to ascertain the amount of revenue that has been remitted to the various government agencies using the e-Citizen platform for service delivery.

The committee said there was a recurring matter relating to non-remittance of money collected through the e-citizen platform.

The MPs cited an amount of Sh11,040,750 in respect of names’ search and reservation, registration of companies and registration of business names which had been collected through the e-Citizen platform by June, 30 2016.