General published the special audit of Government payroll for the financial year ended 31st December 2017 to 2021 on 6th September 2022. This is in line with Article 250 of the Constitution (Amendment) No. 2 of 2016, the Public Finance Management Act No.1 of 2018 and the Public Audit Act No. 13 of 1994.
The report covers Ministries, Provinces and Agencies (MPAs) on allocations budgeted in the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the financial years ended 2017 to 2021. The special audit was conducted to ascertain that the funds appropriated by parliament for emoluments were adequately accounted for.
In recent weeks, a Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) investigation revealed the misuse of government funds at the Ministry of Finance amounting to an estimated ZMW100 million between 2019 and 2021. According to evidence gathered, officials within the ministry would receive payments for fictitious undertakings according to their positions, with some senior officers receiving gratuities of more than ZMW5 million in specific cases. This investigation also revealed how members of staff within the Ministry of Finance from 2019 to date have received and continue to receive payments from accounts 0021 and 0037 of the government’s Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). This siphoning of government funds which were mostly in form of sitting allowances in the parliamentary accounts committee, newly reconstituted committees and Daily Subsistence Allowances (DSAs) were for activities that were either not worked for at all by members of staff, or were received in excess compared to what was due and, in some cases, were not applicable and entirely fictitious.
Thus, it is clear that there seem to be a well-coordinated and intricate network and so it is alarming that such intricate networks of fictitious and organized public theft have continued unabated from previous governments to date. The creation of imaginary committees for payment of allowances has become the norm used to justify fictitious payments which are then misappropriated. TI-Z, in its investigation raised the alarm that this level of mismanagement of public funds is not only common to the Ministry of Finance but this mismanagement has spread to other government ministries, departments, agencies and commissions as more of our investigations, will reveal in due time.
Last week the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a special audit of Government payroll for the financial year ended 31st December 2017 to 2021, in which findings show glaring and alarming levels of public funds mismanagement across Government, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (GMDAs). The audit findings therefore confirm TI-Z’s fears and alarm about the apparent and coordinated cartels across GMDAs established to systematically misappropriate public funds. TI-Z sees it proper that in analyzing the audit findings, a systems approach is applied to demonstrate the magnitude of the problem and to highlight systemic weaknesses, which are drivers for this unacceptable state of affairs. TI-Z’s analysis is aimed at fostering transparency and integrity in the management of public resources as well as identifying institutional, policy, process and procedural weaknesses. The analysis is based on the factors highlighted in the audit report including failure to reconcile the salary account, irregular payment of allowances, irregular payment of salaries, double payment of salaries, suspected fraudulent diversion of salaries, irregular upgrading of teacher’s salaries among others.
