Maravi

Chifungula looks forward to convictions, recovery of funds

Chifungula looks forward to convictions, recovery of funds
Written by Masuzyo Chakwe
Saturday, February 21, 2009 6:47:12 AM

AUDITOR General Anna Chifungula yesterday said she will only find pleasure if she sees a conviction or a recovery of what has been lost through the abuse of public funds.

And Chifungula said the K36 billion allocation to the Auditor General's office in this year's budget is not enough for officers to carry out their works and even audit foreign missions.

Speaking when the visiting British members of parliament visited her office, Chifungula said a conviction or recovery would give the office a lot of pleasure and that officers had seen a few encouraging convictions including that of a former minister.

She said last year, most of the large losses were written off, because the statute of limitation had taken effect.

Chifungula also explained that most of the issues that could not be resolved by her office after numerous follow-ups end up in the report.

"Like last year, we carried out 75 expenditure heads and of those we have about 55 in the report which means that the other 20 we dropped because we had resolved the issues with the various controlling officers," she said.

Chifungula said her office also carried out performance audit as well as financial audits, which would be available in the next four weeks.

"We are also carrying out environmental audits as well as IT audits. We feel that we should be moving towards performance audits now more because then we need be looking at the effectiveness, efficiency and the economy of using those public funds," she said.

She said those were very critical especially when people were becoming more supplicated in how they dealt with corruption.

Chifungula said for some people, corruption had become business and did everything possible look for a return on their corrupt activities.

She also said there was need to strengthen the laws and institutions like the Drug Enforcement Commission and the Anti Corruption Commission which were quite weak at the moment both financially and in terms of human resource.

Chifungula said there was a tendency for people to link any prosecution by the ACC to politics and this gave some element of interference in their work, which they had since strengthened.

"ACC is doing its best; in the last month, they are working with our officers on the purchase of food by the FRA and other ministries. There is quite an interest suddenly. In the past, if you wrote a letter with evidence, you would never even hear from them. They are writing back and sending officers to further investigate," she said.

She cited revenue collection and procurement as the two major hot spots.

Chifungula also said her office protects whistle-blowers and treat their information as confidential.

She said civil society organisations like Transparency International and also the Press Freedom Committee of The Post had been very helpful in working with her office and disseminating information.

Labels: ANNA CHIFUNGULA, AUDITOR GENERAL

posted by MrK @ 6:47 AM