Officials from the National Audit Office need K155 million to audit Malawi\u2019s foreign missions to avert theft and abuse of public money but the government has approved K96.8 million which the auditor general says might not be enough.<\/p>\n
Auditor General, Stevenson Kamphasa, told a joint parliamentary committee of Public Accounts and Budget on Wednesday in Lilongwe that there are many reports of theft and abuse of money in Malawi missions abroad and there was need for thorough auditing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur target is to extend the audit coverage to other missions in the 2017\/18 financial year,\u201d said Kamphasa, who said the shortfall of K58 million in this year\u2019s budget could hamper the exercise.<\/p>\n
He said last year the National Audit Office audited 10 foreign missions, namely Beijing, London, Berlin, India, Cairo, Tanzania, Brussels, Tokyo, Johannesburg and Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis followed the President\u2019s [Peter Mutharika] directive to have all our missions audited in view of the reports of financial mismanagement at the Malawi embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the reports are being finalised, and would be released this coming November.<\/p>\n
He attributed the delays in releasing the reports to that the office had to consult the auditees before making a final report and some auditees took time to respond.<\/p>\n
Some embassy officials were arrested in Addis Ababa amid reports of theft and abuse of public money in Zambia, Tokyo and other missions.<\/p>\n
Turning to Mutharika\u2019s signature programme, Cement and Malata Subsidy Programme, Kamphasa said the off i c e wants to hire engineers and economists as auditors so that they should ensure quality houses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it is expensive to hire engineers but we have to do it, we don\u2019t want substandard work. This is an area we want to focus on so that we have value for money,\u201d said Kamphasa, adding: \u201cWe want to look into real issues on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chairperson of the joint commitee, Kamlepo Kalua, and other committee members pledged their unflinching support for the exercise.<\/p>\n
Kamphasa also said his office would this year focus on the Ministry of Agriculture after reports of theft and abuse of public money at the ministry by officials.<\/p>\n
In addition, he said, his office would continue to audit other government agencies such as the Malawi Revenue Authority, Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority and Teveta, which are prone to theft and abuse of public money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Officials from the National Audit Office need K155 million to audit Malawi\u2019s foreign missions to avert theft and abuse of public money but the government has approved K96.8 million which the auditor general says might not be enough. Auditor General, Stevenson Kamphasa, told a joint parliamentary committee of Public Accounts and Budget on Wednesday in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":47331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47332,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47327\/revisions\/47332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}