Maravi

National resources are not in safe hands

National resources are not in safe hands - Mulendema
By Noel Sichalwe
Tuesday February 13, 2007 [02:00]

THE national resources are not in safe hands, Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants (ZICA) president Chintu Mulendema has said. Commenting on the K36 billion that has been allegedly stolen by civil servants, Mulendema said there was need to revisit the accounting system in government. "It is very sad that we can lose such a significant amount," Mulendema said. "Government should give us a full report of what happened. I am sure this is because of lack of a system, supervision and capacity by people in the accounting unit."

He said government should seriously scrutinise the people in charge of the accounting system and address the problem promptly. Mulendema said ZICA had sanctions for erring accountants if a complaint was submitted with documentary evidence. "There is need for complete restructuring of the financial system in government and replace the positions with qualified and experienced accountants registered with ZICA. But you know, in most cases you find that some of these people are not even qualified accountants and therefore, not members of ZICA. In such cases, we can't do anything if a person complained against is not our member," he said.

Mulendema said government should ensure that all the culprits were brought to book immediately. "The question is what happened to the system, when did the theft occur, where was the Accountant General, his deputy and other controlling officers? The answer will be that, there was total failure reflected in the quality and capacity of people charged with the responsibilities. Now we can't have confidence that our resources are in safe hands.

We need to look at people in-charge of the accounting system and bring in people with the capacity to clean it up," he said. "This is a serious matter because it is tax payer's money involved and this money must be safeguarded. This impacts on the development programme and because we have lost such a huge amount of money, we can't allow things to continue the same way." Addressing a rally in Mpulungu last week, President Mwanawasa said the public service workers had so far stolen K3 trillion. But President Mwanawasa on Saturday said after making calculations, the amount stolen was actually K36 billion and not the K3 trillion he had earlier announced.

Labels: ACCOUNTING, CORRUPTION

posted by MrK @ 9:01 AM