Windhoek
Auditor General Junias Kandjeke has revealed that the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration has allowed companies to continue offering services to the Ministry, even after their tender contracts expired.
The companies identified by the AG include Rent-A-Drum, Independent Business Systems and Nashua Namibia, who provide services to the Ministry of Home Affairs valued at N$1.7 million.
Kandjeke made these disclosures in his report on the accounts of Home Affairs for the 2014 financial year when it was tabled in the National Assembly recently. “Some companies were found to be providing services to the ministry while the tender contracts appear to have expired,” Kandjeke said.
He also indicated that the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Patrick Nandago had reported that amounts of N$228,034 and N$385,174 were spent on repairs to vehicles involved in accidents, as well as HIV/AIDS activities, respectively. Vouchers to support these figures were, however, not provided as requested.
Kandjeke went on to point out further discrepancies.
“The Accounting Officer reported that no financial study assistance was given to staff members during the financial year under review. However, the audit revealed that payments totalling to N$354,110 were made to University of Namibia, Polytechnic, International University of Management and Southern Business School.
“It is recommended that the Accounting Officer should ensure that all payments are used in the financial statement. Differences between the budget and the appropriation account on main division 3, amounting to N$900,000 and main division 6, amounting to N$900,000 were observed.
“It is recommended that the Accounting Officer should ensure that the budget is correctly reflected on the appropriation account,” the report states. Kandjeke also revealed that the Home Affairs budget was underspent by an amount of N$49 million, while some unauthorised expenditure was also recorded.
“Although Treasury approval was obtained to utilise certain expected savings for the defrayal of excess expenditure by the way of virementation [the transfer of a surplus from one account to cover a deficit in another] during the year, two divisions were exceeded by an amount totalling N$400,000. These excesses are unauthorised in terms of Section 6 (a) of the State Finance Act, 1991.”
The Auditor General recommended that the permanent secretary closely monitors and reviews the financial position of the ministry on a continuous basis to enable better financial control and take appropriate actions timeously to avoid under-spending and unauthorised expenditure.
“The ministry had balances on 10 suspense accounts at 31 March 2014. Seven had debit balances and three had credit balances. The accounting officer did not submit documentation to substantiate the balance.” A suspense account is one in which items are entered temporarily before allocation to the correct or final account.
“I am unable to express an opinion due to the following: difference between authorised virements and appropriation accounts, unreconciled suspense accounts, procurements on expired contracts, non-submission of annual report statements, non-reconciliations of bank accounts, difference between budget and appropriations account and non-submission of supporting vouchers,” the Auditor General’s report stated.