By Alusine Fullah

As a way to minimize if not to stop mismanagement of public funds in Ministries Departments and Agencies in the country, the Auditor General whose mandate is to check and cross-check the activities of different institutions has issued its 2022 Audit report and it has brought to light the dubious activities of the Ministry of Planning & Economic Development.

In line with the foregoing, the Audit Report has brought it to the limelight that there was no evidence for the payments of 73 NGOs to the NRA. The expected revenue from those NGOs was 182,500. The report states: “NGO in the National Gazette without Evidence of Payments to NRA Seventy-five NGOs (73 NGOs and two INGOs) were listed in the National Gazette published by the Ministry, but there was no evidence to indicate that they had made payments to the NRA. The expected revenue from these NGOs were SLE182,500 and US$5,000 respectively.”

Responding to Auditors, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development responded that a total of 72 out of 75 NGOs are on the list of paid-up NGOs as collated by both the NGO Directorate and the NRA bank payment, and receipt records are signed by MoPED and NRA. The three NGOs are on hold due to incomplete documentation.

However, the Audit Report has commented that only 72 of the 75 NGOs were identified in the list of paid-up NGOs submitted by MoPED. It states: “We compared this paid-up list with the bank statement from the NRA and observed that these payments did not reflect in the designated NRA bank account. We could not ascertain whether the payments were made into the designated NRA bank account. The issue remains unresolved.”

The auditors also reveal that there has been a breach of procurement records or procedures. The audit report reads: “Procurement records and associated supporting documentation for procurement activities amounting to SLE245,894.40, were not made available for inspection.” However, MoPED responded that all relevant supporting documents in relation to the transactions listed are available for review.

The auditors went further to reveal that bank withdrawals totalling SLE83,000.87, were without adequate supporting documents such as receipts, invoices and delivery notes.

During the preparation of the yearly financial budget, MoPED highlighted several task/ deliverables. However, according to the Audit Report many of those budgeted tasks/ deliverables were not met. Some of those tasks are as follow:   Constitute the NaCCED Board as per law; Validate and approve out-of-school Civic Education Curriculum;  Develop and produce out-of-school Civic Education Training Manuals; Validate and finalise its Strategic Plan during this period; Implement its Fourth Generation National Action Plan (NAP 4) of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in collaboration with CSOs and MDAs.

The audit report recommended that the Chairman of NaCCED liaise with the relevant stakeholders to ensure the implementation of all deliverables in the budgets. Going through the audit report, there was no Management’s response or evidence of the achievement of key deliverables.

In the hearing, the committee also noticed that Seacoach Express Company has been deducting staff salaries for NASSIT payment but most of the staff don’t have NASSIT numbers. According to Mr. Tackie, we have instructed and created opportunities for staff to secure their NASSIT numbers but unfortunately, staff are not responding positively. “I am sure most of them most have secured their NASSIT numbers now,” he said.

The committee also noticed that, among the 10 staff, two are foreigners. The committee asked if those staff have working permit and Mr. Tackie was unable to provide answer to the question. Hon. Fofana move the motion to stand them down so Mr. Tackie and his team will able to prepare well for another hearing slated for Wednesday 13th March 2024. According to the committee, Mr. Tackie and co was asked to submit the correct document on Monday 11th March 2024 at 12pm before the hearing on Wednesday.