KARA APRIL-MAY ISSUE.indd - The Kenya Alliance of Resident ...

Editor’s Note
W
elcome to your preferred public
service delivery focused journal.
As always, we appreciate your support
and encouraging feedback.
The two decades clamour for Kenya’s
new constitution may soon come to a
fruitful end after the August referendum
vote. We call for an impartial civic
education to be conducted in every corner
of the country. We are optimistic that the
Committee of Experts on the Constitution
will realize this key endeavour, in earnest.
We also appeal to the media houses to
remain as objective as possible in their
reporting on the subject.
On the Truth, Justice and
Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) our
position has not changed. The TJRC, its
noble intentions notwithstanding, will not
realize much under the current context.
The Commission must be disbanded now.
On HIV/AIDs, we stand with both the
infected and the affected. With support of
the National AIDs Control Council, we are
promoting the human rights protection of
people living with HIV/AIDs. We continue
to appeal to fellow Kenyans to assist cut
down on new infections.
On Public Procurements and Disposal
Act of 2005, we will be carefully reviewing
any possible gaps between policy and
practice at the Local Authorities. We will
closely work with the Public Procurement
Oversight Authority (PPOA), City Council
of Nairobi and Municipal Councils of
Mombasa, Nakuru and Machakos. We
thank the USAid , through PactKenya, for
its support on this program.
On security, we are working with
the Police Reforms Implementation
Committee, (Naikuni Committee), to
among other issues unravel the challenges
on police reforms, community policing and
private security regulation bill.
On Environment, and together with
our partners, we will vigorously pursue
the public Forests excisions revocation
court case. We also take this opportunity
to humbly remind the Prime Minister Eng.
Raila Odinga that lest he forgets, Kenyans
are anxiously waiting for implementation
of the Effi ciency Monitoring Unit’s Report
on National Environment Management
Authority (Nema). Kara will not relent.
As we mark a decade of promoting
enhanced access to public service
delivery, we are counting on your
continued support to enable us scale to
even greater heights in 2010 and beyond.
Karibuni na asante sana!
As fraudulent and unscrupulous
individuals and businesspeople
devise the ever elusive tactics to
steal public funds, it is becoming
clearer that advancement in technology,
especially Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) could be the only
panacea.
Residents in the city and ratepayers in
other local authorities are losing billions of
shillings to thieves who mostly capitalize
on age old accounting and book keeping
systems to misappropriate public funds.
And as such cases become more
common, Neighbourhood Kenya has
established that honest and well meaning
chief offi cers are now embracing modern
day technology to reduce, if not eradicate,
corruption especially in the procurement
and disposal processes.
The introduction of the Local
Authority Integrated Financial Operations
Management Systems (LAIFOMS) is
gaining popularity even as some authorities
COVER STORY
Local Authorities
Procurements –
Will ICT Cut Corruption
say the program is a little too expensive to
implement.
Most contend that though initially
expensive, it is in the long run less costly
as once fully operational it may save the
billions that would have been swindled by
the corruption syndicates in town.
The City Council of Nairobi is one of
the local authorities that have speedily
incorporated the technology and as the
recently appointed city treasurer Mr. John
Ngugi testifi es, the results are beginning to
show just months into the program.
The effort, for instance, has pushed
up the revenue collected from car parking
fees by over Sh 1.3M. Mr Ngugi revealed
that before the introduction of LAIFOMS
the council was collecting an average of
Sh1.2M shillings a day but now it receives
over Sh 2.5M daily, meaning that some
fraudsters had been illegally making over a
million shillings a day!
Though the treasurer contends that
fraud is still on as a few parking attendants
3.