PAC To Meet Speaker On Audit Backlog After Encounter With Clerk Fail To Yield Results

Menyani 

The Public Accounts Committee of Parliament want to consult Speaker on mapping way forward how the committee will handle audit reports that span a period of nine years.

The Committee intends to request Speaker of the National Assembly to appear before the committee this evening after the committee had in the morning met with Clerk of Parliament over the same issue.

The Clerk was summoned to justify why the committee was allocated with only a week period to scrutinize the audits of nine years from 35 Councils. However, it seems the encounter was not fruitful as the Committee now wants to hear from the Speaker.

“The issue is not whether for us to continue with meetings or not but the issue is as whether they think it is practicable for us to deal with a backlog of nine years in a period of nine years so the Speaker must pronounce himself on this and commit himself to the prioritization of the work that directly benefit Malawians.” said Alekeni Menyani, Chairperson for the Committee

Committee members have demanded to meet the speaker as he is the political head of the institution who has responsibility to prioritize the work that translate directly into the benefit of Malawians.

Speaking of what the committee had discussed with the Clerk, Menyani said; “We were examining whether it is practical that all these things be dealt with in five working days and, the consensus has been reached that that is not practical and we need to find the way forward.”

He explained; “The Auditor General presented to the Clerk of Parliament a backlog of work that spans a period of nine years and has to be dealt with by the Public Accounts Committee. Despite the issues that are spanning the period of nine years, there are also issues of head count in the ministry of Agriculture, health and all those issues”

He said the reason the committee wants ample time to look at the nine year period audits is because they want to finish all the past audits so that they begin to work on the new audits.

He said in 2016 there is no need for the Committee to be looking at old audits and therefore having an ample time to finish old audits will enable them to pursue with recent matters.

“At this point it means that if someone steals money today they will be questioned in nine years time. But that is not good.” said Menyani