15 Jun 2014

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has noticed shortfalls in some ministries and this resulted in government losing money due to inaction by accounting officers.

PAC chairperson, Mr Nehemiah Modubule said on June 13 when briefing members of the press that some of the accounting officers relied heavily on finance officers. As such, he said accounting officers did not apply themselves effectively to monitor and control expenditure levels of government.

Mr Modubule further said it was also discovered that changing of accounting officers quite often had an impact on the performance of ministries.  He therefore, appealed that it should not frequent because it negatively impacted on their performance.

He further indicated that one of the most disturbing phenomena was missing of records in most ministries, noting it was a cause for concern as lack of record keeping could not be tolerated.

Mr Modubule said most of the ministries did not remit tax to Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) immediately after collection, and some ministries took even a year before they remitted taxes to BURS.

When commenting, Mr Thuso Motshegwe of Gabz FM asked the chairperson to state recurring challenges faced by government ministries. In response, Mr Modubule said missing of records was not a new phenomenon in government, and PAC could not set rules for them, as they could only recommend to Parliament.

Member of Parliament for Kanye North, Mr Kentse Rammidi said some of the ministries experienced under-expenditure since some projects stalled for years because some bidders lodged complaints after awarding of the tenders was undertaken.

Mr Modubule further said PAC had performed to the best of its ability, noting that discrepancies encountered were due to those who failed to do more on their part. Mindset change, he said was important, saying people must govern themselves with or without laws as he believed in corrective justice.

For his part, MP for Tonota North, Mr Fidelis Molao said they did not want to operate as a terrorist organisation to accounting officers who have to appear before PAC, saying they only provided guidance so that people could follow and acknowledge that there were lapses. ENDS