Parliament has approved motion seeking the parliamentary approval to audit the Auditor General for three years in a deal that will see Kisaka & Company Certified Public Accountants conduct the audits at a cost of Shs265.8m.
This followed a motion by Keefa Kiwanuka (Kiboga East) seeking approval of Parliament to allow the Parliamentary Commission contract an auditor to audit the Auditor General so as to fulfill the requirements in the Public Procurement and Disposal Assets Authority (PPDA) for all contracts to be subject to public scrutiny.
However, Enosi Asiimwe (Kabula County) asked Parliament to stay approval of the motion until the due process is taken and accused Keefa, who also doubles as Chairperson Finance Committee, for ambushing Parliament with a motion yet the Committee had agreed to stay the appointment of Kisaka and Company Certified Public Accounts until due process is taken.
“We understand the pressure of accounts of the Auditor General being audited before March and the process for identifying a new auditor has taken so long but we agreed that as much as we are late for audit, we can’t allow a company that has already been there for three years be renewed for another three years without a proper process being followed,” said Asiimwe.
However, Deputy Speaker Anita Among told MPs that the contractor will be supervised by the Parliamentary Commission and later on put the motion to question which MPs approved.
It should be recalled that in October, Parliament published a bid notice naming Kisaka & Company Certified Public Accountants as the best evaluated bidder to undertake audit process of the Office of the Auditor General.
In 2017, Parliament approved a motion giving powers to Kisaka auditors to audit the Auditor General, ending a twelve years long standoff, during which time the Auditor General hadn’t been audited.
For a firm to audit the auditor general, the Parliamentary Commission requires evidence for the firm to show it had earlier carried out works of such a magnitude.
Many of the top audit firms can’t also meet requirement of auditing the auditor general because of the requirement in the bid notice, barring firms that had undertaken works with auditor general not to be suitable to audit their former partners.
The Office of Auditor General has been known for hiring out other audit firms to undertake some special audits on its behalf.
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