PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan has directed the government to respond to the opinions of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) on audit reports for the fiscal year 2021/2022 before they are tabled at the parliamentary meeting in April this year.
She stated that the audit reports will be presented to parliament for discussion by Members of Parliament, therefore a response from the appropriate government authorities was required before the discussion in the House.
The Head of State issued the directive at the State House in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday during the presentation of Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) performance report and Controller and Auditor General (CAG) audit reports for 2021/2022 fiscal year.
“I received the reports and will forward them to Parliament as soon as possible so that the government can respond to the issued opinions. Some opinions have been issued because government officials failed to provide appropriate records or failed to keep records, but if they are searched, many opinions will be reduced,” said Dr Samia.
She added, “If the government takes longer to respond to the opinions, community members will take what the MPs say because the MPs will not know whether the government has responded or not,”.
Presenting the report, CAG Charles Kichere said his office audited a total of 1,045 institutions in 2021/22, out of which it issued unqualified opinions to1,010 institutions, an equivalent of 96.64 per cent.
Mr Kichere said out of the institutions, 218 were under the Prime Minister’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments) in which 204 got unqualified opinions while the remaining 13 got qualified opinions and one received adverse opinion.
Also, out of the audited 203 public organizations, 196 were issued with unqualified opinions, the remaining five got qualified and others received disclaimer opinions.
A total of 315 central government entities, 19 political parties and 290 development projects were also audited.
The report indicates that in the Central Government, 309 had unqualified opinions, while those with adverse opinions were three and the other three had qualified opinions.
CAG Kichere also audited 19 political parties, whereby 12 of them scooped unqualified opinions, five adverse opinions, one qualified opinion and one received disclaimer of opinion.
According to the report, the CAG issued 29 qualified opinions, or 2.78 per cent.
The CAG also audited 290 development projects, according to Mr Kichere, with 287 receiving unqualified opinions, three receiving adverse opinions, and none receiving qualified opinions.
Highlighting on the implementation of previous CAG recommendations, he said of the total 21,831 recommendations, 8442, which is about 39 per cent were fully implemented.
Another 6,971 recommendations, equivalent to 32 per cent are still under implementation while the remaining 2,936 recommendations, equivalent to 13 per cent are not yet implemented.
He further noted that 2,643 recommendations were repeated while other 39 suggestions were outdated.
“There is need to improve supervision in implementation of these recommendations in order to attain more achievements in carrying out the projects,” Mr Kichere said.
The report also revealed that Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) was one of 42 government entities that had losses or overspent for two years in a row.
Additionally, Mr Kichere discovered that 6.1bn/- of the funds from asset seizure were inadvertently placed into accounts meant to hold funds obtained through plea bargaining rather than asset seizure accounts.
Also, he reported handing over of 1.3bn/- hard cash to the Treasurer without going through the special recovery account and lack of a cash book to record confiscated assets as well as failure to issue receipt of the funds as identification.
“Faults in the management of confiscated assets have led to wearing out and risking their security due to failure of keeping its records in the book of the prosecution’s office,” he noted.
Likewise, the CAG discovered faults due to lack of transparency in the handing over process between the office of the Director of Prosecution and the accused.
Mr Kichere also revealed an audit report involving embezzlement at Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) following a tip off from social media.
He said the auditing process had incurred slight challenges, including obtaining various documents but after solicitation, the exhibits were available to them.
“The audit discovered that 1.95bn/- conducted through 40 invoices did not show authenticity and legality due to lack of genuine documentation aside from only listing names.
“A sum of 1.34bn/- was indicated to have been received by various officials through signed invoices, whereby the whereabouts of 611m/- could not be established if the intended official received the money,” stated the CAG.
Also, a total of 38.72m/- was paid as allowances contrary to the stipulated guidelines and 114m/- was double paid to officials for carrying out the same task of preparing financial reports.
He recommended that the management of TANAPA should ensure the money was recovered as well as ensuring control of payment as per the stipulated rates.
