Parliament suspect billions of Kwacha's were stolen between 2008 and 2010 in most Districts, Towns and City Councils as it has discovered that a lot of payment vouchers and supporting documents for some expenditures are still missing.
Some district councils are appearing before the Committee to respond to audit of 2008 to 2010 with focus on missing payment vouchers highlighted in the audit reports under the period. The committee is following up on unaccounted purchases of fuel, other materials for projects and subsistence allowances among others as there were no supporting documents during the time of auditing.
However, it has been established that although the documents went missing during the material time of auditing, during the appearance to Public Accounts Committee the papers are being brought to auditor general for certification.
Committee has been informed that some of the missing documents have been traced and have now been certified by the Auditor General. The common justifications given to the Committee has been that most documents could not be traced at time of audit due to misplacement. However, still some districts have failed to trace the payment vouchers of which the committee has further demanded the Councils to produce the documents.
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| Kamlepo |
Deputy Chairperson for Public Accounts Committee, Kamlepo Kalua said the missing of vouchers raises eyebrows as this clearly suggests that rampant fraudulent happened during that period and further suggests occurrence of the practice still taking place now.
“What we have discovered is, there are number of loopholes, number of inefficiencies that took place and we could say that was a direct sort of link into looting public resources and most of the accounts that we have seen are in billions.” he said
Having gone through only few districts and seen number of missing documents under the period, Kalua projected that by the end of the week meeting with remaining districts, the total amount of money not accounted for during that period could accumulate into billions of Kwacha's.
“So, we have seen that we have a long way to go” he added
As committee is investigating 2008 to 2010 audits which are old documents though very important exercise, however the process is subjecting new office bearers for the councils to explain things they never done or things that happened before them.
Kalua agrees that this should change and that the Committee should indeed begin to track audits which are very recent.
“We feel this should not be the case now, we should be dealing with the current ones and not the old ones." He said, "Because most DCs are answering to queries that were not party to and are struggling to give information to something they never committed. I hope in future we will be able to improve because this backlog is not doing this country any favour at all. We need to do something current, we need to actually do the 'spot on' kind of investigations so that together we are able to improve the deficiencies as well as incompetencies in all districts, town and city councils.”
He then observed that to enable the committee to investigate recent audits, Government must adequately finance the Auditor General Office so that it does audits in good time and that the Public Accounts Committee must also be supported because it has a very important role of monitoring how public money are being spent.
Mchinji district officials were sent back on Wednesday for failure to account to Millions of Kwachas estimated close to K500 million. During the time of auditing Mchinji failed to produce receipts for the fuel purchase for ambulance, subsistence allowances, among others.
"To have K500 million for 8 years ago is quite alarming to the Committee and calls for number of actions to be undertaken." Reacted Kamlepo during the meeting
"In that respect it is the view of the Committee we cannot continue with our sessions with you. The Committee regretably sends you back till we meet st a set date " He ruled
The Committee demanded the representatives to bring in the future meeting, a former controlling officer, former sector head of health and the person who was handling the finances at that time.
Ntcheu district officials were also sent back for appearing before the Committee without controlling officers (District Commissioners) who were running the office during the audited period as it was observed that it could have been a waste of time to ask incumbent officers to go into details of things that happened before them.
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