KIMIHURURA - The Auditor General of State Finances, Obadiah Biraro, will today present the financial audits for the Fiscal Year 2009/10 in a joint session of senators and deputies at the parliamentary buildings, Kimihurura.

The report which indicates how much the central government and public institutions spent during this fiscal year and how state finances were managed, comes at a time when the Chamber of Deputies has established a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that will scrutinise the report.
 
Although a new report is to be presented today afternoon, issues highlighted in previous reports have not been settled yet.

Biraro confirmed that his office is ready to table what would be the eighth report since 2002. He however declined to pre-empt the content of his report.

"It is unprofessional for an auditor to pre-empt his findings before presenting them to the board. In this case, the Parliament is the board,” said Biraro, who will be presenting his first report since he took up the post replacing Evelyn Kamagaju.

Previous reports indicated that huge amounts of public money was lost through illegal awarding of tenders, a practice many say is yet to be contained effectively.
 
Critics have however accused the legislature and the judiciary of moving slowly in taking action against those cited in previous reports to have mismanaged public funds.

Appearing before PAC, before he was appointed the Auditor General, Biraro claimed that the Auditor General’s office was frustrated by the pace at which action is being taken on the reports.

After Biraro’s presentation of the new report, Parliament will forward the report to PAC for scrutiny and further investigation.

According to the vice chairman on PAC, Hon. Evode Karima, procedures of how his committee would assess the report will be revealed today.
 
"We will have to wait for the Speaker to hand the report to us officially and thereafter the chairperson of PAC will announce how we will deal with it,” said Karima.

Jean Baptiste Musemakweli, a member of PAC, told The New Times that PAC is still at the phase of coming up with an operational model.

"After coming up with clear work plan, we will deal with the reports and we will be working closely with the Auditor General’s office,” said Musemakweli.

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