The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has summoned 129 officials from central and local government, and government enterprises to explain their role in the loss of funds, mismanagement and the discrepancies highlighted in the 2013/14 Auditor-General’s report.

The officials will start appearing before the committee today.

The 129 officials are drawn from 29 agencies PAC says are not the only with unclean books but represent a sample of those with qualified audit reports across all sectors.

In the central government, top officials from the Ministries of Agriculture and Infrastructure will face the critical team of PAC members to answer several cases highlighted in the AG’s report.

The Permanent Secretaries of the two ministries, who are also the chief budget managers of their respective dockets, have been listed by PAC to head teams of their staff as they appear during the hearings.

Within the local government sector, PAC has summoned 14 district and the City of Kigali officials, while others featuring on the list include government boards and parasatals.

Among parastatals on PAC list include Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA), the Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB), the former Energy, Water and Sanitation Authority (EWSA), Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA), Rwanda Education Board (REB), Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), the Rwanda Natural Resources Authority (RNRA), and the National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB), among others.

PAC hearings are expected to be open to public as previously, and committee members are expected to come armed with proof of how institutions mismanaged public funds while the faulted agencies will as well have to defend their case in the usually tense sessions.

The report

In the Financial Year 2013/14, the Auditor-General assessed how 131 institutions manage public finances. Of those, 36 per cent had clean audit reports.

The report indicated that Rwf11 billion was spent wastefully.

"We couldn’t summon all the institutions that had issues with their audit reports, so we picked out those with serious issues in their financial reports,” said PAC vice chair Thenoneste Karenzi, who added that the committee will be looking into how the summoned institutions comply with laws and regulations of financial management.

"We have seen some improvements over the course of years, but challenges still remain, many of which call for more work at all levels,” said Karenzi.

Previously, Auditor-General Obadiah Biraho has attended PAC hearings and taken on government officials to explain either missing funds, mismanaged or embezzled.

Speaking to The New Times, yesterday, Biraro said PAC should put much of its efforts in addressing the root causes of mismanagement and devise preventive measures to ensure taxpayers’ money don’t go to waste.

"PAC needs to look into the loopholes leading to the mismanagement, how they come about, who are the individuals exploiting these loopholes and how can all this be prevented. If PAC can exemplarily deal with these 29 institutions, even others would learn a lesson from them,” said Biraro.

Commenting particularly on the former Energy, Water and Sanitation Authority (EWSA) that has featured in his reports covering many pages over gross irregularities, Biraro said the utility has long been marred with "systematic mismanagement”

"This systematic mismanagement comes from the top most management of EWSA (now split into REG and WASAC), down to the lowest level. The issue here was disturbingly gross but with the new management and the split, we are witnessing changes coming up, especially in human resource,” he said.

In December, last year, Prosecutor-General Richard Muhumuza reported that his office had indicted 74 public officials, including permanent secretaries, over mismanagement of taxpayers’ money as a result of 2011/12 Auditor-General’s report.

However, Muhumuza during an interview yesterday said that there are latest figures that give a broader picture of what his office has so far done with regards to the AG reports.

"We have since finalized with the 2012/13 report and will soon present to the media our findings. Also in July we are starting on the 2013/14 report. When we are investigating these cases, sometimes we discover much more irregularities than highlighted in the reports but we will present that to the media as well soon,” said Muhumuza.

Normally, when the AG releases his annual report, Transparency International Rwanda picks it and makes its analysis of local government performance based on the findings of the Auditor-General.

Assessing local governments

The Executive Secretary of Transparency International-Rwanda, Apollinaire Mupiganyi said, "We assess all the 30 districts in relation to the AG’s findings and indeed we find major issues that call for concern.”

"In our previous assessment, we discovered that in all the 30 districts there were issues to do with public procurement irregularities and the AG’s report had also highlighted the same concern, this is something PAC should look into as a committee charged with ensuring government accountability. On average, 60 per cent of districts’ budget goes through tenders, which is why tender regulations must be respected by all means,” he said.

The 2003/14 AG’s report indicated that there was Rwf11 billion in wasteful expenditure and it particularly documented failures in management of government business enterprises (GBEs) and other parastatals, especially the RSSB and RRA.

The majority of the GBEs audited did not maintain proper books of accounts and their financial statements were misleading and not reliable for decision making, with RSSB, EWSA and RRA cited among the culprits.

The institutions were also found with failures in their internal financial control systems, with significant errors found in implementing internal controls and resulting in delayed execution of activities, loss or misuse of public resources, diversion of public funds from the intended purpose and lack of value for money in many projects implemented.

At RSSB, potential losses of public funds were detected in the board’s loans to other institutions, construction projects, sale of properties and purchase of shares.

According to the AG’s report, there are various cases where RSSB has not been able to recover loans granted or proceeds from disposal of investments with potential loss of funds totaling more than Rwf16 billion.

The Boards of Directors of RSSB, EWSA and RRA were faulted for failure to effectively provide oversight to ensure proper accountability for resources they generate and manage.

editorial@newtimes.corw