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PAC, Treasury differ on sanctions

 

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has differed with Treasury on the way forward on measures to be taken against officers mismanaging public funds which were presented to the committee.

While Treasury has said it awaits PAC to approve the measures before it can come up with a final report and start implementing them, the committee has differed with the procedure.

In October last year, Treasury outlined about 35 measures to address issues that were raised by PAC during its meetings with various government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). The measures were presented to PAC.

But when asked about the progress on the implementation of the measures, Treasury spokesperson Davis Sado said they were waiting for PAC’s input before they could take action.

Menyani: It is unprocedural

He said: “Basically when we presented the measures, PAC had indicated they would also want to input something into what we had submitted because they had their own suggestions. So we were waiting for that before we could come up with one set of consolidated set of measures for actionable points.”

But in a separate interview, PAC chairperson Alekeni Menyani said it was unprocedural for Treasury to wait for an approval from them.

Menyani said there were already laws in the Public Finance Management Act that essentially serve the purpose.

“When they wrote us we thought they were just sharing the measures because they wanted to start implementing as per the law because we have been accusing them of failing to apply the law that already exists.

“PAC does not have that mandate of approving that would be highly irregular we only recommend that there be action taken as per the law. The law is very explicit as to what they must do and we are waiting for them to do that so we feel for them to start asking the committee to approve will be highly irregular,  unprocedural and unheard of,” he said.

Menyani said upon receiving the measures the committee adopted the document as part of their report which was included as part of the committee’s resolutions to be presented before the House during the May sitting.

But Sado said the fact that they were waiting from the committee did not mean there was a vacuum as government has guidelines and regulations that are being implemented and followed.

“For instance, public servants are interdicted while some are actually prosecuted…. but those [measures] were some of the emerging issues that PAC had observed and were outstanding in most of the queries in the MDAs,” said Sado.

In September last year, PAC gave Treasury 21 days to come up with the measures on how to deal with public officers involved in mismanagement of public funds.

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