Parliament yesterday described the Ministry of Home Affairs as the worst performer in terms of administering the accounting procedures required in the Public Finance Management Act after it was found they spent some money without Treasury approval.
This was said by chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Accounts, chaired by Makoni West MP Webber Chinyadza, during an appearance by Home Affairs secretary Melusi Matshiya and Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede.
The two were summoned to speak on the 2009 to 2010 audit reports by the Comptroller and Auditor-General.
But Matshiya defended the ministry’s position saying they had no choice except to flout Treasury instructions because of the bureaucratic tendencies in the Ministry of Finance, which resulted in late disbursement of funds to ministries.
Matshiya said in some instances they were faced with “life-threatening situations” whereby at one time Treasury failed to timeously release $1 000 to repair toilets at the Central Registry, resulting in accumulation of human waste on corridors.
“The reasons why cash was not banked was because there was no nourishment from the Ministry of Finance, yet we were faced with life-threatening situations and we had to decide whether to let people die or be accused of not following accounting procedures to save life?” Matshiya said.
“For example, the Registrar-General Office’s toilets were blocked and Mudede could not get only $1 000 to repair them and so I said should I close the offices or use the cash I had to save people,” Mudede chipped in: “My situation at the Registrar General’s offices was cholera and we decided we could not allow bureaucracy to prevail over us when we had money.
“Since there was no toilet, people used to urinate or defecate in corridors and we said common sense should prevail.
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“At one time I went to Kenya to give the Vapostori who were being deported identification cards and birth certificates and we ran out of money, but Treasury instructed us to return.
“We did not return and ended up using the money we were collecting in order to continue with registration for four weeks.”
He described bureaucracy as “the devil of devils”, saying accounting procedures could not be so tight as to let people die.
“The money was however later accounted for,” Mudede told the committee.
The committee also quizzed the Home Affairs ministry about financial leakages by Immigration officers in Victoria Falls, where money went missing after some officers acquired a counterfeit date stamp. “We later discovered after internal audits that people had their own counterfeit stamps, but action was taken on those officers and some of them were fired or suspended,” Matshiya said.
“We will provide Parliament with the total amount the
