The original Auditor General Office’s (AGO) audit of 12 Ministries and associated statutory boards has revealed irregularities to an extent not fully revealed by the recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
According to the AGO, losses of public monies added up to $6.2 million, a substantial amount of which is still unaccounted for.
The Auditor General’s preface to the report states that ‘This audit approach is not intended to reveal all errors and irregularities.’
In the report, the Ministry of Law lost a potential $77,666.64 safety deposit because its computer system could only register sums to the nearest dollar. It appears under the header ‘No $77,666.64 security deposit because of 36 cents’.
The report details how these millions were lost in a detailed account of mistakes and dubious practices.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, for example, charged rental far below the market rate, forgoing $2.38 million that should have gone into state coffers. The Ministry of Law, in addition to the 36 cent mistake, left our public funds $386,829 poorer by failing to implement rental increase. This was described as an ‘oversight’.
The list goes on.
The Ministry of Manpower delayed collecting a $501,998 debt for a grand total of 15 years. When it decided to finally recover the sum of money, the company disputed the debt owed but the Ministry did not have the necessary paperwork to ‘substantiate the debt’. National Development lost us $228,000 in foregone rental, and Trade and Industry overpaid $1.87m in grants to a statutory board (since recovered).
The largest outstanding sum identified was the Ministry of Health: $136.2 million for Phase III of the National University Hospital development project has still not been recovered despite having been completed in 1996.
More questions than answers
The report raises more questions than it answers. Procurement irregularities are unexplained: a National Development contract was awarded for an eighth ranking bid (in terms of price) out of 11 without any justification. Further, the officers signing the contracts were not authorized to do so. Under the column ‘subsequent action’, all that is said is that the Ministry ‘streamlined procurement procedures…which would prevent such lapses from recurring’. Not even an ex post facto explanation about the dubious procurement.
The ‘subsequent action’ detailed for other irregularities and mistakes do not offer much elaboration. In the case of the Ministry of Manpower’s half a million dollar mistake that spanned 15 years, it gave assurances that ‘levy debts will be resolved within a much shorter time frame in future’ and that ‘future relevant documents’ would be retained.
TOC Opinion
Theonlinecitizen (TOC) recently reproduced in full the report by the Public Accounts Committee (here), convened by Parliament to scrutinize irregularities highlighted by the Auditor General’s report for financial year 05-06. It gave few concrete figures to highlight the irregularities it was pointing out.
TOC has obtained a copy of the original AGO report, which gives a far more comprehensive overview of the scope of the irregularities. This is reproduced in full (see below). We hope that members of the public will step forward to scrutinize the report and ask the necessary questions of our public servants.
In light of the limited scope of the Auditor-General’s report, we believe that the public deserves a more thorough audit of its public offices. Further, action needs to be taken to examine why these mistakes occurred in the first place: What are the fundamental causes of these lapses? Is it systemic or is it just incompetence on the part of the departments involved?
What were the consequences of these multi-million dollar mistakes?
This report can either be swept under the carpet to the further detriment of the credibility of the media and our government, or it can serve as a reference point for a new era in government transparency and accountability.
We hope the latter will prevail.
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