Africa-Press – Eswatini. Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairperson Musa Kunene says the National Disaster Management Agncy (NDMA) board of directors has no respect for the committee and Parliament and has accused the board of ignoring their recommendation to suspend CEO Russel Dlamini.
This was provoked by the agency’s alleged failure to account for millions of public funds and ‘providing questionable responses some of which were hand written, contradictory responses and bank statements that were stamped’.
Dlamini’s early attempts to assure the committee that the expenditure was justified fell on deaf ears after he failed to provide the required supporting documents.
The committee further decried that the current audit queries were similar to the query where the agency reportedly failed to account for over E3 million spent on hand sanitisers during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The committee previously recommended for the CEO, CFO and procurement manager to be suspended pending further investigations on the matter. However, the board allegedly ruled against the recommendation.
This was during the appearance of the deputy prime minister’s office to account for audit queries detailed in the compliance audit report of the Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini for the financial year ended March 2021.
Some of the audit queries included unaccounted for expenditure for emergency response projects amounting to over E11.4 million, unaccounted for expenditure for COVID-19 response project amounting to over E30.9 million, unaccounted for and undisclosed fuel funds amounting to E10.8 million, unaccounted for funds for child-headed households programme and Cyclone Eloise project amounting to over E34 million, to name a few.
In the early stages of the session, the committee members raised a concern that the same issues they encountered during previous sessions with the agency were still evident as they failed to account for the public funds entrusted to them.
The first committee member to raise the concern was MP Allen Stewart who said he was concerned that they were dealing with similar issues where government procurement procedures were not followed while boasting that they were dealing with emergencies.
He also noted that the responses from the agency were not supported by the required documentation.
“I am concerned that we made a recommendation earlier and the same trend seems to be continuing. What is the point of us making recommendations when they are not implemented and nothing is done while public funds continue to be misused,” he said.
Chairperson Kunene recalled that during the public hearing conducted earlier this year, the committee recommended for the board to inform them in writing within two weeks what justified their decision to retain the CEO and co.
“What was so hard in doing that because we did not even recommend for them to be fired or suspended without pay but our recommendations were not implemented? We showed respect to the board but that respect has not been reciprocated,” he said.
He insisted that the board had not shown respect to the committee and Parliament and what was of grave concern was that there was no improvement and the agency still flouted government procedure.
He further threatened to summon the board but decided to give them another chance and directed them to furnish the committee with a report clarifying their reluctance to suspend the said officials.
Kunene also clarified that they were not insinuating or accusing anyone of embezzling the public funds but were only interested in accountability for public funds as the committee mandated to look after the public purse and the public’s interest in general.
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