Nairobi — FRUSTRATED by President Kibaki's laid-back style in dealing with corrupt ministers, Prime Minister Raila Odinga now intends to amass more powers to deal with culprits himself.

Raila wants to take from Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta the power to commission private audit firms such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers to investigate scandals at various ministries.

Raila has directed his Permanent Secretary Dr. Mohammed Isahakia to prepare a Cabinet memo seeking to grant the PM's office the powers to order private investigations into corruption allegations concerning ministers or government officials.

Raila has also directed Public Sector Reforms and Performance Contracting PS Richard Ndubia to organise the insertion of a new clause in the performance contract system that will force ministers and their PSs to automatically quit office if a major scandal emerges in their ministries, even if they are not directly involved.

The PM also wants ministries to be barred from probing themselves when there is a scandal and the Efficiency Monitoring Unit, which also falls under his docket, should handle the investigations.

Raila believes that the public cannot trust an audit carried out by the suspect ministry or the Treasury. Normally the Treasury dispatches its auditors to suspect ministries to monitor how their funds have been utilized.

Raila gave an intial indicatio of his plan last Friday when he and President Kibaki opened a corruption workshop at the Kenya Institute of Administration in Lower Kabete.

"If a ministry probes itself, or investigations are carried by Treasury, the public cannot trust that. This role should be transferred to the Efficiency Monitoring Unit," Raila said.

If Raila's proposals are accepted, the Prime Minister will effectively have the powers to order investigations and force a minister or PS out of office through the amended performance contract without the President's approval.

At the moment, though the National Accord states that he is the coordinator and supervisor of government functions, he lacks the power to sack or suspend any minister, assistant minister or a PS including those he himself recommended for appointment from the ODM side.

Raila can only recommend to the President who wields the constitutional powers to appoint and fire members of his Cabinet.

Raila has been at loggerheads with Kibaki over the alleged misuse of millions of shillings meant for Free Primary Education programme.

The PM has recommended to President Kibaki that he suspends Education minister Sam Ongeri and his PS Karega Mutahi but the two are still in office and have been verbally criticising the PM.

Explaining why he needed powers to order private investigations, Raila has accused the Treasury of dragging its fee when requested to do so.

As an example, he cited the six months taken by the Treasury to order a private firm to carry out a forensic audit of the National Cereals and Produce Board to establish the magnitude of the maize scandal in February 2009.

Raila also accused the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission of handling corruption cases as though they were probing "murder cases.

"Cases have been piling up at the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission. It is viewed as a parking lot for cases," Raila said.

Yesterday the PM renewed his pressure on Ongeri and Mutahi to resign to allow for investigations into the loss of FPE funds which caused the UK and other donors to suspend assistance. He was launching a scholarship programme for Equity Bank at KICC yesterday.

Raila said the fact that Ongeri was "my personal friend" would not deter him from instilling a new culture of fighting corruption in Kenya.

"There have been very serious allegations about the Free Primary funds, and the Ministry of Education is in the dock. So I am telling my friend the minister and his permanent secretary to step aside and allow for investigations. That does not mean that they are guilty. The investigations will take two, or three weeks or a maximum of one month to be carried out.

"Investigations cannot be carried out when you begin by saying this one or that one are the ones who are guilty. You begin by suspecting everybody. Then you go by way of elimination that so and so was not involved, and they can go back to work. That is the way investigations are carried out," he said.