AfricaPress-Tanzania: GROSS mismanagement of public funds, poor supervision of government projects and negligence in various government institutions and local government authorities are among the rot unveiled in the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) 2018/19 report unveiled yesterday.
Presenting an executive summary of audited reports to President John Magufuli, at State House in Chamwino Dodoma, CAG Mr Charles Kichere revealed that state entities channelled billions of shillings into ghost ventures, among others.
The CAG noted that more than 5.46bn/- was spent by various government entities to purchase goods and services without proper contracts.
In seven government entities, items worth 587.65m/- were purchased without being delivered.
The CAG established that there was no confirmation that 10.39bn/- collected in 84 Local Government Authorities (LGAs) was banked.
He said the auditing of 185 LGAs established that 60 of them collected 109bn/- whereby 43bn/- was supposed to be set aside for development projects, but only 26.37bn/ was allocated, thus pointing to misallocation of the remaining 17.41bn/-.
The CAG observed instances of fraud totalling to 1.25bn/- which require further investigation in the councils of Itigi, Iramba, Madaba, Moshi town, Tabora and Kibondo.
According to CAG, more than 1.25bn/- was spent on unnecessary activities contrary to the Local Government Finance Act by 13 LGAs.
He further established that in the year under review, Tanzania embassies in Stockholm, Brazil and Algeria spent a total of 1.02bn/- to pay rent, the amount which might have been used to renovate their dilapidated houses.
Mr Kichere said there are 14 buildings abandoned by Tanzania missions abroad requiring major repairs in Geneva, Nairobi, Kigali, Maputo, Bujumbura, Khartoum, Kinshasa, Washington DC, Lilongwe, Harare, Stockholm, Pretoria, Lusaka and New York. The report also shows misappropriation of funds by political parties.
The CAG said a total of 300m/- out of 369.38m/-, which was given to Civic United Front (CUF) as a subsidy was transferred to a private account.
Expounding further, he said 69m/- was also withdrawn from the party’s account without the knowledge of the party’s secretary-general as for the party’s requirements.
The CAG also cited the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) used 60m/- to refund a tenant after terminating his contract without adhering to the terms agreed.
CAG presented 19 reports to President Magufuli that includes the central government report, LGAs, public institutions, development projects, Information Communication Technology audit report, monitoring report for recommendations issued in previous audit reports and 12 reports for various sectors.
He presented 1,082 certificates in which 1,017 (94 per cent) had unqualified opinion, 46 (4.25 per cent) had disclaimer opinion while seven (0.64 per cent) had adverse opinions and 12 (1.11 per cent) had qualified opinion.
Institutions that had adverse opinions include Tanzania embassy in Addis Ababa, STAMIGOLD, the National Land Use Planning Commission (NLUPC) and Handeni Water Project.
