Reb officials in Parliamemnt over anomalies in accounting records

Officials from Rwanda Education Board (Reb) are today expected before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to explain the anomalies in bookkeeping highlighted in the 2012/13 Auditor General’s report. PAC is today expected to commence its public hearing, with all public institutions and agencies faulted for misappropriation of taxpayers’ money in the latest AG’s report expected to be summoned. PAC’s working document, a copy of which The New Times has seen, points to lack of a database and poor accounting practices among other anomalies reported at Reb. “There is no complete database of student’s loan recoveries. Reb records students’ disbursements as expenditure and students loan recovery as income. This confusion makes it difficult for Reb to establish the actual balance of outstanding recoverable loans,” the document reads in part. The report indicated that Rwf14.1 billion of the student disbursements was recorded as expenditure, while Rwf2.89 billion of students loan recovery was recorded as income. However, Reb did not justify to the AG the actual balance of the outstanding recoverable loans, an issue they will have to explain. Also, part of the issues that are likely to come up during Reb’s appearance in PAC include gross mis-posting in their books of accounts. The AG report indicates that Reb chart of accounts did not reflect all their activities and therefore lacked relevant account ledgers for some transactions during the audit period which resulted in various expenses being recorded in wrong accounts. ‘Lack of value for money’ Lack of value for money in the tender of supply of rectangular hollow sections for schools’ construction is one of the major issues that the AG faults Reb for. “I noted that there was no value for money in awarding tender of supply of rectangular hollow sections for schools construction worth Rwf 1.3 billion,” the AG wrote in the report. The tender in question comprised of 10 lots and, according to the bidding document, each bidder could apply on all lots but no single bidder could be awarded more than two lots. The evaluation report, signed by the internal tender committee, shows that one bidder was the lowest responsive bidder on eight lots and this required allocation of six of the eight lots to other bidders. “Consequently, the internal tender committee allocated lots based on different combinations and awarded contracts at a total cost of Rwf1.3 billion,” reads the AG report. “However, review of the evaluation report shows that the Internal Tender Committee did not consider some cheaper combinations of lots that would have resulted in contracts awards totaling Rwf1.29 billion and savings for Reb of up to Rwf64 million.”. The AG noted that if the lowest responsive bid per lot was applied without considering the limit of two lots set in the tender document, the total cost of this tender would have been Rwf1.2 billion, which would make the contracted amount lower by about Rwf117 billion. “This further illustrates that choice of method of award of this tender as set in the tender document could have resulted in award of the tender at a high cost and hence no value for money. Failure to exhaust all possible combinations of different lots led to loss of public funds and denied Reb the benefit of purchasing goods and services of high quality at competitive prices,” the AG further noted. Other issues that PAC is likely to put Reb officials on the spot for include irregularities One Laptop-Per-Child programme where some laptops are distributed to schools with no electricity, malfunctioning or mismanaged. Others include, incomplete fixed assets registers, weaknesses noted under stock management, delayed completion of consultancy services, and over and under spending on some budget lines.

News

Reb officials in Parliamemnt over anomalies in accounting records