Barker: Hold DDAs accountable

By LULU MAGINDE
INSTITUTE of National Affairs (INA) executive director Paul Barker says district development authorities (DDAs) have a history of not being held accountable.
Barker said mechanisms in place meant to keep DDAs in check were not adequately funded or resourced to do their work and were behind on their responsibilities.
Barker said it was important for the public to be concerned about these things and to maintain a solid level of interest and pressure on the Government to ensure proper checks and balances.
“The Auditor-General’s most recent public account of the country is from 2014; so while they do complete audits for some issues, most of it is way behind and it is due to either department heads not submitting reports on time for audits or the Auditor-General not having the resources,” he said.
“They are so many years behind on all their paperwork because they’ve got 1,420 government institutions to audit and they include local level governments (LLGs) so they don’t have the capacity, staffing or funding to do anything more than a fraction.”
Barker told The National that he advised leaders in the past of the weaknesses of the DDA system for holding emergency funds as records had shown how they had been misused before and referred to the example of the Kandep (Enga) frost disaster in 2015 and how funds were squandered with no accountability.
The people in charge of managing DDA funds do not keep good records of their expenditures nor is there a spending plan or guideline to adhere to, he observed.
“All DDA funds are very well unaccountable,” he said. Secretary for Justice Dr Eric Kwa said the Independent Commission Against Corruption needed to follow-up with these systems but they would only work if it had the resources and was fully independent.