Auditor General’s Report Unmasks More Rot In NHIF Amid Ksh20 Billion Scandal
The Auditor general’s report that was released on September 2023 reveals more rot in NHIF amid Ksh20 billion scandal.
What it refers to as the overstatement of staff costs was noted by the Auditor General.
According to the financial filings, NHIF reported paying its staff 4.86 billion shillings in compensation for the year that ended in June 2022.
As the nation struggles to come to terms with the Ksh. 20 billion loss at the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) due to false medical claims, an additional report from the Auditor General, obtained at the public health insurer in mid-September 2023, exposes further corruption at the fund, where millions of shillings are embezzled as salaries and benefits.
What it refers to as the overstatement of staff costs was noted by the Auditor General. According to the financial filings, NHIF reported paying its staff 4.86 billion shillings in compensation for the year that ended in June 2022.
Auditor General’s Report Unmasks More Rot In NHIF Amid Ksh20 Billion Scandal
But according to the Auditor General’s audit, only Ksh.4.81 billion was actually used, leaving about 50 million shillings in expenses that were not accounted for.
There were also doubts regarding the accuracy of the NHIF payroll due to allegations that certain workers received excessive salary and benefits.
In 2021–2022, fifteen employees received overpayments totaling 536,800 shillings in house allowance; seventeen employees received overpayments totaling 1.62 million shillings in acting allowances; two employees who were suspended were paid more than half of their basic salaries; and five employees received their basic salaries, totaling Ksh.8.28 million, during their suspension.
It was also discovered that the fund’s procurement procedures had been misused. Contracts worth Ksh. 306 million shillings were carried out incorrectly.
Five contracts for the period ending in June 2022, according to the report, raised an alarm because they began to be implemented before the contract was even signed.
In its investigation of the funds’ information systems, the Auditor General discovered that the fund had overstated its budget by up to 296% for the purchase of ICT-related licenses.
The licenses ended up costing the fund 48 million shillings instead of the 12,105,907 shillings that had been planned.
However, not all of the IT infrastructure purchased through these tenders was utilized. For example, out of the 1700 end point antivirus licenses purchased, only 823 were active and the remaining 877 were unused. The total cost of the licenses was $7 million.
The Auditor General warned that these flaws might jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the funds information systems after the audit discovered that the NHIF’s database and operating systems had security issues that left the funds information systems vulnerable to attacks from both the inside and the outside.
In fact, the studies point to situations in which it appears that certain healthcare professionals manipulated data in the systems to inflate claims, while others succeeded in pressing for the payment of claims without the necessary supporting paperwork.
The EACC is presently conducting investigations into the fraud at the NHIF, and these investigations include the auditor general’s report.
Auditor General’s Report Unmasks More Rot In NHIF Amid Ksh20 Billion Scandal