GASABO - In a bid to promote transparency and prevent people from acquiring wealth fraudulently, the ministry of Local Government’s clean audit report has exposed the Southern and Eastern provinces as the areas most affected by embezzlement, corruption and incompetence.

The audit is part of a regular review of local government practices by the ministry every year.

The audit findings also included; weaknesses in material audit adjustments and preparation of financial statements.

A meeting called to access the challenges and  make resolutions to combat corruption and other vices,  identified embezzlement, corruption and incompetence, as the main challenges in the running of local authorities.

The clean audit evaluation meeting was held at Nyandungu hotel, on Friday.

The minister of Local Government, Protais Musoni, urged local authorities to follow the law when awarding tenders and to rectify all the anomalies that the auditor general’s report, published last year. 

Opening the meeting, Musoni cautioned local government officials over corruption and office abuse citing the Rusizi embezzlement saga as the most prominent.

Provincial and district executive secretaries, internal auditors, representative of the auditor general, finance ministry and local government ministry officials, pondered on what the partners can do when handling public funds.

Rwanda Local Government Association (RLGA) Secretary General, Theogen Karake, called on local government to put more effort in fighting nepotism in recruitment since it has been observed as another root cause of inefficiency.

"In our investigations to date 23 out of 31 districts’ executive secretaries have been sacked due to incompetence and to my judgments all goes together on how they where recruited,” Karake observed.Other issues identified by the meeting were; lack of financial statements, backing papers on spent public funds, unaccounted for operations, and illegalities in tender procedures, as well as the embezzling of  collected revenue.

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