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Reports are that the Auditor General’s Office which is responsible for auditing the annual accounts of the Government of Sierra Leone that is approved by Parliament is going to drop bombshell by reporting that, once more, there are very serious lapses in the management of public funds in her 2020 Report.
Intimidations from the corridors of the Auditor General’s Office are that, just like the 2019 Annual Report that was released in October 2020, this year’s too I’d full of allegations of gross misuse of public funds by Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government – something that the Financial Secretary and Parliament raised grave concern about in the 2019 Report.
It could be recalled that when the Auditor General released the 2019 report on how MDAs used funds allocated to them by the Ministry of Finance, there was a lot of noise making from the ruling SLPP party which had vowed to fight corruption and public financial malfeasance that the Auditor General’s report was full of discrepancies. While all well-meaning Sierra Leoneans applauded the Audit Office for a job well done, in the heated public debate that ensued, some people even called for her resignation on sacking because she reported that just as in previous years, hundreds of billions of Leones could not be accounted for.
The 2019 report was damning. Over one hundred million dollars could not to be accounted for. What the Audit clearly pointed to was that the main areas of concern that they continued to uncover were the assessment, collecting, recording and reporting of government revenue. State owned enterprises collected monies and taxes that were not banked.
From The Exclusive Newspaper, the Audit showed for example that allowances amounting to Le9.2 billion were paid to employees without adequate supporting documents. Taxes amounting to Le1.3 billion were not deducted from rent allowances paid to employee and contractors.
The area that offers the greatest opportunity for fraud the report said was procurement of goods and services. Audit observed that just for some ministries, procurement activities totaling Le21 billion were not captured in the procurement plan.
Furthermore, it was discovered that contracts were not advertised and letters of regret not sent to unsuccessful bidders. Audit concluded that the procurement of goods and services in the ministries was not in full compliance with the Public Procurement Act 2016.
It can be recalled that after the 2019 Report was published, the ACC that they had a keen interest in it and together with parliament and ASSL were launching an investigation to ensure that the various issues of concern are speedily and accordingly addressed without favour for anyone.
