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NewsDay

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Parly to expose public funds abusers

Business
PARLIAMENT will “name and shame” government officials abusing public sector funds at its next sitting next month, a top official has said.

PARLIAMENT will “name and shame” government officials abusing public sector funds at its next sitting next month, a top official has said.

BY TATIRA ZWINOIRA

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Accounts chairperson Paurina Mpariwa told NewsDay on the sidelines of the launch of the Accrual-Based Reporting consultative workshop in Harare yesterday that the naming and shaming of abusers came on the back of the re-assignment to other ministries despite being exposed as having abused public funds.

“The 2016 accounts are the ones we are now going to analyse. We have dealt with the 2014 and 2015 accounts. For the 2016 accounts, we are going to make an analysis on whether any concerns from entities reported on in the 2014 and 2015 accounts that have been raised by the Auditor-General (outgoing Mildred Chiri) are now addressed through the 2016 analysis,” she said.

“We are actually raising our recommendations in Parliament, through the Public Accounts Committee to say we worry about so and so. We are going to name and shame, come the next session (of Parliament) that we are going to open on September 12.

“It will be a different scenario of where we are going to make an analysis of repeated personalities that have been actually re-assigned to other ministries, when they have actually done worse in another ministry.”

Mpariwa added that they were “now shortlisting which is in terms of ministries and entities that have got repeated cases in terms of the recommendations made by the committee that they are not implementing”.

She said her committee had an analysis report of the 2014 and 2015 Auditor-General’s reports which they would use to identify officials involved in the abuse of public sector funds that still hold government and public sector positions.

In the 2016 Auditor General’s report, Chiri said the same unqualified internal individuals within different ministries were the ones still doing the reports of funds allocated to that particular ministry by Treasury.

Chiri also reported that close to $1,5 billion was not properly accounted for.

Mpariwa said the public accounting system was good but its implementation was lacking.

“We need to push people to behave the way we want in terms of accountability and transparency,” she said.

Chief Secretary to the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) Misheck Sibanda said the 2016.

Auditor-General’s report revealed a continuing pattern of poor financial management.

“The Auditor-General’s Report to Government and to Parliament for the Financial Year 2016 reveals a continuing pattern of poor financial management and disregard for even the most basic tenets of sound corporate governance within a number of Line Ministries, State Enterprises and Local Government Authorities,” he said in a speech read on his behalf by corporate governance and delivery unit secretary in the OPC Stuart Comberbach.

Last month, the OPC found that some State-run parastatals had not produced audited financial results for the past 10 years and were contributing far less than what they could.