By Bampia James Bundu: Strategic Communications Unit, Ministry of Information and Communications.
The Financial Secretary, Sahr L. Jusu, has disclosed that the New Direction government of President Julius Maada Bio has increased budgetary allocation to Audit Service Sierra Leone to enable them do their job efficiently and independently.
He made the disclosure at the weekly government press briefing held in the conference room of the Ministry of Information and Communications at Youyi Building in Freetown on Thursday, 18th March 2021.
In his address, Mr. Jusu made it categorically clear that Audit Service Sierra Leone is independent and that government has no intention of interfering with its operations.
He noted that the issue boils down to compliance with the Financial Management and Control Act of 2017 which clearly provides that all monies collected for or on behalf of government by any agency must be transferred into the Treasury Single Account. “All we care about is for the Auditor General to comply with the law by transferring audit fees collected from MDAs and that has nothing to do with controlling the operations of Audit Service”, the Financial Secretary said.
In order to ensure prudent and robust financial control in the management of state resources, the Financial Secretary noted that, all MDAs that collect money for and on behalf of the state must deposit it into the Single Treasury Account to enable the Accountant General monitor it.
Speaking on the 2019 Audit Report, the Financial Secretary wondered why an audit report that is slated for one year can accommodate financial malfeasances of several years not related to the year under review. “Where on earth will you audit an entity for a year, you take figures of 2015, 2016, 2017 and add them onto the 2019 audit and call it cash loss?” the Financial Secretary asked.
He went on to inform the press that the New Direction Government has increased budgetary allocation to Audit Service by 30%. “In 2021 we allocated Le53.4 Billion to Audit Service and we have disbursed half of that already.”
Mr. Jusu encouraged MDAs to respond to auditors in order to make their work easy.
He clearly stated that the New Direction Government cannot misappropriate such an amount of money reported in the 2019 report. “Not this government,” he emphasised.
