A coalition on social justice has said that the Auditor General’s (AG) recommendations are not implemented due to a lack of political will.
The Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) was making an analysis of AG’s report findings from a social and economic justice perspective.
“It was a great disappointment indeed when the report finally came and highlighted the same irregularities that have recurred for the past three years,” ZIMCODD Executive Director Janet Zhou said.
“The OAG’s work goes unnoticed despite the office’s efforts to produce follow up reports on previous recommendations.”
ZIMCODD says the first step in restoring public confidence is addressing the recommendations of the AG’s report in its analysis.
“Despite the growing public interest in the findings of the AG’s report, there has been a lack of political will to enforce the recommendations, hold the perpetrators accountable and enforce appropriate penalties and disciplinary action,” ZIMCODD says.
“This has resulted in increasing public mistrust and therefore, low tax compliance considering that the government is misusing and abusing national resources.”
“The government, thus, has a daunting task to restore the public confidence and the first step in addressing the recommendations of the AG’s report.” ZIMCODD goes on.
Most of the errors in the 2017 report have been in recurrent since 2015 according to ZIMCODD.
Recurring errors from the 2017 AG report include abuse of financial systems and fiscal rules, failure to reconcile financial transactions, poor bookkeeping, poor maintenance of accounting records, violation of treasury instructions, poor budgetary control, poor asset management, untimely posting of financial transactions, failure to recover amounts owed to government departments, wasteful and overstated expenditure, violation of procurement procedures, poor service delivery, diversion of resources from both funds and appropriation accounts, failure to recover debts owed to government departments and untimely payments to suppliers of goods and services.
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