Govt. Pay Roll Under Tight Scrutiny
By Donstance Koroma
Audit Service Sierra Leone has on Wednesday, January ,2025, engaged the media on the 2023 Annual Audit Report launched on the 9th of December and laid in the Well of Sierra Leone’s Parliament on the 17th December, 2023.
Morie Lansana, Acting Deputy Auditor General, in his overview stated that due to public outcry and interest on the way and manner the country’s pay roll continues to sky rocketing has stimulated the reason why the Audit Service Sierra Leone decided to label the theme for the 2023 report as “Pay Roll “.
He continued that because the Pay Roll theme of the report, there is a stand-alone report on the Pay Roll with a central focus on the Accountant General office, Ministry of Finance and the Human Resource Management Office both being the entities charged with the responsibility of managing the country’s pay roll.
According to Morie Lansana, he stressed that, what they report are irregularities that may have come to the attention of the Auditor General, which he clarified that there are lots of issues that may have come to his attention during the cause of the audit, only irregularities that are material and have an effect on citizens is what the Auditor General actually reports,
Acting Deputy Auditor General informed the media that the report is divided into three parts with seven chapters which include MDAs , Local Councils , oversea missions, Public Enterprises and donor agencies.
For the appendix, irregularities with financial impacts were given rapped attention as the report focuses on service delivery citing revenue, contracts management, payment without supporting documents, assets not physically verified and staff not available for Physically verification and called on the media to do justice on issues raised in the report that has to do with service delivery.
Selvin Bell, Head of Finance, Audit Service Sierra Leone stressed the role of the media in popularizing the burning issues contained in the report.
“The Public Financial Management Act was drafted in such a way that parties within the said structure has a role to play and the media is no exception,” Selvin Bell stated.
He continued that regardless of how well the audit report is written, if it is not communicated to the citizenry in a manner in which they can understand, resources and time invested will be a mere waste, hence the reason why Audit Service Sierra Leone has been conducting such media engagement.
He disclosed plans to produce the report in an abbreviated version and also in a pictorial manner in an effort to communicate to all classes of citizens.
Bell stated that it is usual for MDAs to challenge their reports but expressed disappointment on MDAs on the grounds that the institution times without number explained the processes from pre- engagement before the report is written and eventually released.
He said when we have quarries with MDAs , we issue written quarries to them in the form of a draft report with them having the responsibility to respond to the draft report.
He added that upon receiving the responses they will go further to verify the responses before the report is written.
‘’It is important to note that all parties of the accountability network or chain are responsible for their activities owing to the fact that great power comes with great responsibility,” Selvin Bell remarked.
Audit Service Sierra Leone has been given a great power to look into the activities of government and report and with such power comes with great responsibility, he said.
He emphasized that as an institution they take responsibility of what they put in the report because all of their processes and procedures are in accordance with international best practices.
He called on the media to seek clarifications with the supreme audit institution whenever they have issues they want to challenge in the report.
The engagement was concluded with questions and answers session.