The Government is looking to overhaul the procurement process.
Finance Minister James Marape recently told parliament that the entire procurement process needs to be revamped to ensure all procurement have a common registry and common filing system across the board.
“This is so that registry is able to be part of the government planning process.”
The process of the expenditure acquittal of provincial and district funds has also come under the radar, with the Minister stressing on the importance of daily reports culminating in a monthly and quarterly reports.
“All these reports must be furnished by the 31st of March in the preceding fiscal year to the office of rural development.
“I am staring into a report that shows a declining trend of financial reports not being submitted to the department of rural development or department of finance, or in the instance of public accounts, the auditor general’s office,” said Marape.
Meantime, Northern Province Governor Gary Juffa said most parliamentarians are not getting their monthly expenditure reports from their district and provincial treasurers.
“These monthly expenditure reports are what are required to monitor the expenditure of public funds in the district and provinces, these are not reaching the members’ offices,” said Juffa.
He said most of the people in the district and provincial offices are simply not qualified for the positions that they are being hired for.
“For instance, the provincial accountant, they are not even accountants in most instances and you go down the line the examiners are not even qualified, this is one of the reasons why acquittals become a significant problem, and then MPs end up hiring private accountants to help them do the accounting process, which is very costly,” said Juffa.
Juffa accused the human resource division within the Finance Department of carrying out a recruitment process that is possibly corrupt, engaging many persons who are simply not qualified.
He further asked if there was a centralised system that allows for monitoring of the reports that if the expenditure reports are not delivered on time, a red flag would be raised and the finance office would be able to find out which district or province has not delivered, with appropriate disciplinary action to be taken.
(The Opposition in parliament last week)