The Sunday Mail
Auditor-General Mrs Mildred Chiri recently released her 2020 audit reports, which covered Government ministries, parastatals and local authorities. As expected, the audits uncovered high levels of mismanagement of public funds in some institutions. Last week, the AG’s Office hosted a media workshop in Nyanga where journalists learnt how to interpret issues that are raised in her reports. Our Senior Reporter Leroy Dzenga (LD) engaged Mrs Chiri (MC) about her latest findings.
*************************
LD: Your reports unearth incidents of financial mismanagement running into millions of dollars annually. How does it feel for you and your team after putting in such meticulous work having some institutions ignore your findings?
MC: It’s a kind of damper on my morale and that of the team.
But we are also conscious of the fact that this is not just unique to Zimbabwe; it’s across the board.
In the meetings we convene with other auditor-generals, we find them complaining of the same problem.
Although I am unable to tell the level of implementation of the recommendations in those jurisdictions, in our case, I think there is some improvement in the levels of implementation of the recommendations.
I can say it varies. It’s now between 30 and 40 percent, and it would appear the rate of implementation is rising, although my desire would be to have a big-bang approach so that our accountability and transparency really show in the management of public finances and reflect on service delivery.
As I said, although it is a bit discouraging, this is the mandate that we have as an office, whereby we have to produce audit reports and we cannot stop because there is little implementation.
As time passes, we hope to see some change, starting with the change that we are seeing.
LD: You said the implementation rate of your recommendations is now ranging between 30 and 40 percent. How does it compare with previous years?
MC: In previous years, it was actually less than 30 percent, so I can say it was much lower.
LD: We have institutions that have become habitually problematic; for instance, reading through your reports, we always see the City of Harare being flagged for basic things like failing to submit books for auditing. What power does your office have to deal with such institutions that are wilfully errant?
MC: Our role is to carry out the audit and highlight our findings.
When it comes to enforcement, it should be done by the authorities in the parent ministries.
In the private sector, if performance is below par, disciplinary action can be taken to the extent of someone being demoted or even being fired.
We believe that it should be an institutional role that resides within the organisation.
The structure of our office is modelled according to the Westminster system, which gives room for separation of powers.
With the Westminster system, we have got the Parliament, the Executive, the Judiciary, then we have the Auditor-General.
The Auditor-General reports to Parliament on his or her finding on the ministries.
We then have the police, where authorities can report any cases of malfeasance.
We now also have ZACC, who we give our reports.
So, I think there is no need for my office to get extra powers; otherwise, it will be a duplication of roles.
We do not want a case where my office will play the roles of the police, the judge and the jury because there are other institutions set up to exercise those powers.
LD: You mentioned that your reports will now be published in local languages. When do you expect to start publishing them in vernacular?
MC: For a start, we are not going to be translating the whole report.
We are going to start with the summary; the highlights of the report.
We are going to put the summary of our report in IsiNdebele and chiShona.
We once did it before Covid-19 and it was almost out, but because of the pandemic, we could not proceed.
So, we thought when this Covid menace is out of the way, like now, we will be able to relate with all institutions that can assist us.
We were once assisted by the linguistics department at the University of Zimbabwe.
We will write the summary and they will translate it on our behalf.
In terms of the timelines, we will do that with the 2021 report.
We are currently auditing the financial statements for the year 2021 and we would want to translate that report.
LD: ZACC last week indicated that they will be using your recent report to investigate cases of misappropriation at public institutions. Is there scope for enhancing cooperation between the AG’s Office and ZACC?
MC: We have a close working relationship with ZACC.
We have already signed an MOU with ZACC to the effect that whatever information that we have that would facilitate the work of ZACC, we will be sharing with them and in particular our audit reports.
Once the reports are done, we avail them to ZACC so that they follow up and where they need clarification, we are always available to assist them.
LD: How much did it cost the AG to produce the 2022 report
MC: Unfortunately, I can’t recall the amount offhand, but it was budgeted for in our 2021 budget. So we worked well within our financial limits. I will need the finance people to assist with that.
LD: Your reports often highlight glaring gaps in our public procurement system. In 2018, Government decentralised public procurement to individual entities in order to deal with incidents of corruption. In your opinion, has accountability improved as a result of the reforms?
MC: I think the current system is more amenable to transparency and accountability.
With the current system, where the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) is facilitating and no longer participating in tenders and playing the role of referee, I think they have enough time to follow up on the procurement processes that are happening in most public entities.
They do quarterly reports on how each entity has performed at the end of each quarter.
They also give guidance when they find that there are a lot of challenges in a particular area.
They call for meetings with various procurement management units and they also call for meetings with permanent secretaries, the heads of ministries, advising them on areas where there are pitfalls.
So I think this current setup of procurement is very user-friendly, open and transparent and actually is assisting ministries to achieve their objectives in their procurement plans.
