PAC Not Contented With Speaker Intervention On Audit Backlog

Alekeni Menyani

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament says will have two more discussion meetings with Parliament Secretariat on the way forward how the Committee will have to handle nine year stacks of audit reports.

This follows another unsatisfactory meeting with the Speaker of the National Assembly on Thursday evening also just the committee had in the morning summoned Clerk of Parliament.

Members of PAC members are outraged by the National Assembly decision to allocate five working days for the Committee to handle the backlog of audit that was done for the past nine years in the district councils.

“These issues are still ongoing.” Confirmed Alekeni Menyani, Chairperson for PAC

He said “Meanwhile we are not satisfied with interventions that is there but it has been opened up and there will be further two meetings during which time we will be able to finalise this issue because the issue of committee work oversight is call and central to the work of the National Assembly”

The committee is concerned that is not practical for the committee to finalise looking at such a pile of reports within a week hence the arrangement to meet with the Speaker to pronounce himself to the prioritization for the work that directly benefits Malawians.

He even did indicate that they are not only ones frustrated with the National Assembly decision saying the Auditor General whose office produce such audits is equally concerned  

“As a committee, our work emanates from the National Audit Office by the Auditor General himself. Auditor General has also expressed himself to the Speaker” disclosed Menyani “He said as Parliamentary Auditor General he is not being given enough resources to work with the committee because he can only finalize his work if he brings reports to the committee”

“Our work is not tailored by ourselves it is tailored by the executive arm of Government and when we asked the executive arm as to why the Committees are not given funds, the executive arm of Government told us clearly that they are giving funds to National Assembly but that the prioritization here at the National Assembly is one that is upside down. 

This is why we summoned Clerk of Parliament on procedure for the prioritization of committee work and the Clerk ably expressed herself on this and also presented to us the strategic plan that is to be used for the prioritization of committee meetings.”

“And so because the figure head of this institution is the Speaker, members made an arrangement also to have him here so that he explains himself to us as to whether what Executive is saying that it is him who is not giving to commitment to committee work and he is the one failing in his duties to prioritise his work.  

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