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Milupi accuses govt of shielding culprits in Auditor General’s revelations

Milupi accuses govt of shielding culprits in Auditor General’s revelations
By Ernest Chanda
Mon 22 Feb. 2010, 03:40 CAT

LUENA independent member of parliament Charles Milupi has charged that the government is not taking action on revelations in the Auditor General’s reports as a way of protecting some people.

In an interview on Thursday, Milupi who is also former parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC) chairman, expressed disappointment with the laxity by those in the government. He said they should respect people’s trust given to them and begin to act with responsibility.

“I think the revelations in the Auditor General’s annual reports that refer to abuse of public resources is something that is worrisome. It’s worrisome in the sense that these revelations have been coming out year after year.

It is the same issue, it is misappropriation, it is misapplication, it is delayed banking, it is non-retirement of imprest. It is projects not being completed on time or to specified standards,” Milupi lamented. “These things collectively are costing this country a fortune.

It is one of the areas, which contribute to this country moving backwards instead of forward. If you are given a responsibility why should you cover someone who is embezzling? Someone who is not retiring imprest, someone who is misapplying or misappropriating public resources?

Maybe they are protecting each other because some of them could indeed be culprits. This lack of action on the revelations of the Auditor General’s reports is killing this country.”

Milupi said by ignoring these reports the government was indicating that it was fine to abuse public resources.

He said the government had a constitutional mandate to act on such serious matters.

“Now with these revelations that keep coming every year you can almost predict that even the 2009 report will be the same, the 2010 report will be the same.

The reason for this is that the governments are not taking this matter seriously and as a result they’re ignoring the revelations of the reports.

The first line of defence is the internal audit system in the various ministries even before the Auditor General comes in,” he said. “They have a constitutional mandate to take action; when you have something going wrong you stop it going wrong, time after time if you take decisive action so that those watching or those participating they will see that clearly and avoid falling into the same trap.

If you ignore it you are giving a clear message that it is okay to continue like that. By ignoring this thing government are giving a clear message that it is okay to abuse public resources, it’s okay to misapply public resources, it’s okay to misappropriate public resources.”

He said it was worrying that the government was not concerned about the ordinary people who were suffering as a result of such abuse.

“Even a simple matter like retiring imprest this government is failing to get on top of it. This is wrong and they are disadvantaging this country. They’re retarding us further, and because of that the first people to suffer when a country gets poorer and poorer are the ordinary people.

These are the ones who cannot access good health facilities, they can’t access quality education. Zambia will only move forward when we get a government that gets on top of all those things, a government that lives for the benefit of all,” said Milupi.

For years now, successive reports from the Auditor General’s office have revealed serious financial irregularities that have not been acted upon by law enforcement agencies.

Labels: AUDITOR GENERAL, CHARLES MILUPI

posted by MrK @ 6:23 PM