Treasury irks Parliament over DCs’ disciplining
Parliament has expressed discomfort with Treasury’s failure to implement its recommendation to take action on some former district commissioners (DCs) accused of misappropriating public funds.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament says it was particularly worrying that without even discussing with them, Treasury resolved to reverse the committee’s decision to surcharge “reckless district commissioners”.
Early this year, the committee wrote Secretary to the Treasury and Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) urging them to discipline the DCs after they failed to explain how money was misappropriated in the 2008/09 and 2009/10 financial years.
The first victim of the committee’s fist was Charles Thombozi, who has since been appointed director of chiefs in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, who allegedly failed to account for K7.2 million payment vouchers which lacked supporting documents for 2009/10 financial year when he was serving as DC for Nkhotakota.
But in an interview last week, PAC chairperson Alekeni Menyani faulted the Treasury over the lack of action, describing it as a “worrying trend” despite the fact that issues to do with disciplining was out of range for the committee’s mandate.
He said: “Treasury reversed singlehandedly, without any discussion, a decision by the Public Accounts Committee to surcharge a reckless district commissioner that’s a worrying trend.”
However, Menyani said they were yet to meet as a committee since the decision was made but they had written them again reinforcing their decision.
“We cannot reverse, the decision of PAC remains that Mr Thombozi is surcharged for the loss of money that he could not account for. Even when he was given time by the Auditor General to look for the documents he failed and we felt that was dangerous and that was why we surcharged him, but it seems he is being backed up,” he said.
The PAC chair said laws clearly state on what action to take when such issues come to light and they were surprised to note that the senior government officers “developed cold feet” to implement the committee’s resolutions.
Treasury spokesperson Alfred Kutengule did not respond to the issues raised by PAC after he requested for a questionnaire last week.
But when contacted again yesterday, Kutengule referred The Nation to Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development who are the DCS employers.
However, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development pushed the matter back to Treasury, saying “implementation of the Public Finance Act, where surcharging falls under, is the responsibility of Ministry of Finance.”
“If Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development was instructed to discipline the said DC, surely that would have been done by now. Surcharging obviously is not part of disciplinary hearing but issues of financial management that do not fall under this ministry,” explained Muhlabase Mughogho, the ministry’s spokesperson.
Section 88 (2) of the Public Finance Management Act states that it is an offence for a public officer to engage in poor record keeping pertaining to finances and can incur a five-year prison term and fine.
Previously, PAC had written the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to probe some district councils such as Balaka over allegations of fraud and suspected corruption.
