About K147 million cannot be accounted for at Karonga Teachers Training College (TTC), a leaked preliminary management report from the National Audit Office (NAO) for the year ending June 30 2020 has shown.
The figure may be revised after the college responds to the queries from NAO office.
The report shows that the college, among other suspicious activities, paid K57 million in subsistence allowances without activity reports and spent K51 million without supporting documents contrary to Treasury instructions.
Treasury instruction number 5.9 (2004) state that every controlling officer shall ensure that proper accounting records are maintained to support all financial and related transactions “and further that full supporting documents are retained and filed in such a way that they can easily and readily be accessible, and can be produced immediately upon the request of the Ministry of Finance and National Audit Office.
The management report, which we have seen, further reveals that Karonga TTC paid K17 million to a supplier who did not have a contract with the institution. The report fears that “funds may have been paid for supplies that did not take place”.
“An inspection of actual fees collection and deposit slips revealed that between September 2019 and June 2020, fees collected amounting to K12 262 880 was not accounted for since it was not deposited to the college account and no evidence was produced for expenditure by the college,” reads part of the report which also shows that about K9 million in stores ledger could not be accounted for.
Efforts to talk to Principal for Karonga TTC proved futile as he could not respond to our questionnaire submitted over a week ago – neither did he pick our calls.
In a written response spokesperson for NAO who is also chief auditor Caroline Buliani said the audit in question is in progress hence they could not comment on the report.
“The audit for government accounts for the year ended 30th June, 2020 is still in progress and the final report which shall contain all the outstanding issues will be issues by December 31 2020 as per the requirements of the Public Audit Act.
Suffice to say that the office of the Auditor General does not make public the results of the audit before the report is tabled in Parliament. Audit processes are followed before making the results of the audit public” explained Buliani.
She said management, upon being issued with a management report, is supposed to respond within 14 days “after which all issues that have not been satisfactorily responded are included in the Auditor General’s report that is tabled in parliament”.
We have not independently verified if the college has responded to these queries.
