Another scandal hits E-citizen

Parliament has summoned Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo over irregularities with the E-Citizen platform after it emerged that money collected through the platform does not reach the Treasury accounts at the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).

The National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday trained its guns on the PS even as it faulted the National Treasury for not implementing recommendations of the watchdog committee based on issues raised by the Auditor General.

This came up during a session in which Solicitor General Shadrack Mose appeared but was unable to disclose how much the State Law office collects in revenue through the E-citizen platform for services such as marriage licenses.

Mose, who had appeared before the House team to respond to audit queries for the 2022/2023 financial year, said that he did not have records from the National Treasury on how much is collected through the E-payment platform.

“The E-Citizen platform does not give us a report on how much the State law office collects for such services,” stated Mose. His response, however, prompted the Committee chair and Butere MP Tindi Mwale to summon the PS over the same.

“It is only right that the Principal Secretary appears before this committee to shed more light on this matter that touches on other government departments,” said Mwale.

 “It is not clear whether the money collected through the E-citizen platform ends up at the exchequer accounts and we need clarity on this,” added Turkana MP Joseph Namwar, who alluded to a possibility of the system being abused by those in positions of power.

Rarieda MP Otiende Amollo noted that the issue had earlier been flagged by the office of the Auditor General in 2017 but faulted Treasury for not acting on the same despite a recommendation by the House team.

“There are so many queries on this E-citizen platform and all we want to do is issue a special letter to the National treasury to explain why it has not acted on the recommendations of PAC…It would be idle of us to treat this matter as routine,” stated Amollo.

Aldai MP Marianne Kitany was also adamant that more needed to be done to address the opaqueness of the E-citizen platform.

 “There are cases of billions of public funds being handled at E-citizen. Its reporting mechanism is, however, wanting…it should also be made clear on where the platform is domiciled,” Kitany said.

According to a report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu, for the 2022/23 financial year, Sh116.83 billion was generated from 15 of the 34 gazetted marriage centres, but the amount from 19 centres was not recorded.

This, Gathungu noted, was due to the failure by the State Law Office to prepare and submit marriage fees periodical reports at the county and assistant county commissioners’ offices, which is in turn responsible for the lack of quarterly and consolidated reports on marriage fees as at June 30, 2023.

“In the circumstances, the existence of effective internal controls that ensure all revenues are collected and reported on in a timely manner could not be confirmed, “reads the report in part

It further noted that the State Law Office continues to use gazetted Deputy County Commissioners (DCCs) and the Assistant County Commissioners (ACCs) to perform and register civil marriages. This is despite the fact that section 50 of the Marriage Act mandates the Cabinet Secretary in charge to appoint Registrar of Marriages at the national and county levels, who shall perform and register civil marriages and issue marriage certificates for all registered marriages.

Notably, the summons to the PS comes at a time when the committee is still investigating why the E-citizen system is still being run by vendors if the government is in complete control of the system.  The system was established in 2014 by Webmasters Kenya Limited, a company founded and run by James Ayugi.

Earlier this year PAC directed the National Treasury to avail the contractual document between the government and the vendors of the platform in a bid to determine the government's control over the system and authenticate its operations.