The man at the centre of procurement of the now problematic Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis) former accountant general Reckford Kampanje today told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament that the system is near perfect.
Kampanje appeared before PAC where he outlined how the software for Ifmis was procured and challenges that have led to theft of billions of kwacha.
Kampanje, who was accountant general between 2004 and 2008, said the software was procured on recommendation from development partners as part of the conditions to attaining debt cancellation.
“To my knowledge, Ifmis did not have loopholes. The system had a project team who didn’t report any serious breaches of the system. I am saddened and it is quite unfortunate to hear that there were some officers, who were sharing passwords, to the extent of pinning them on a wall and defeating internal controls,” Kampanje said.
Kampanje also parried away allegations that security modules of the Ifmis software were not included during the purchase, arguing that information technology would not have recovered deleted transactions had that been the case.
He also denied being stopped from proceeding with an audit into the ministries following revelations of K450 million theft in 2011 when he was auditor general.
In earlier meetings with Chief Secretary to Cabinet and current Auditor General Stephenson Kamphasa, the committee heard that a former secretary to the Treasury verbally stopped the audit office from proceeding with investigations after the preliminary audit.
Meanwhile, the committee failed to continue a meeting with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) acting executive director Atuweni-Tupochile Phiri because she would not disclose information the committee wanted to know.
Her responses irked Thyolo Thava MP Lifred Nawena who said her appearance was meaningless because she would not tell them anything.
