THE Harare City Council (HCC) could have been swindled of thousands of dollars after a forensic audit revealed that some of its point-of-sale (POS) machines were not linked to its bank accounts.<\/p>\n
HCC introduced POS machines in 2016 to make life easier for the transacting residents.
\nWith the biting cash shortages, Zimbabweans now prefer to transact electronically hence the upsurge in the usage of POS machines.<\/p>\n
But a forensic audit at HCC has disclosed that 19 POS machines distributed across council\u2019s revenue-collecting points are not linked to any of its bank accounts.<\/p>\n
\u201cA 100 percent stock count on the 43 district offices and other council revenue collecting centres revealed a total of 188 POS machines. There were 19 POS machines that were located at district offices but could not be found on the bank list.
\n\u201cIt was also noted that there was a \u2026POS ID which had dual identification codes hence the risk was that it was open for abuse and manipulation,\u201d reads part of the audit.
\nThe audit checked on all its bankers using the client\u2019s duplicate receipts and merchant copies to trace sampled transactions for POS machines ID to debtors account, bank account and cash book but the procedure did not yield the intended results as the devices were not linked to their respective cash books.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was noted that some of the banks did not have corresponding BIQ cash books, hence audit could not extract the BIQ cash books of such banks,\u201d the audit revealed.
\nBecause of the lack of BIQ cashbooks, transactions made from such bank accounts were being posted into cashbooks in use on the day.<\/p>\n
Audit manager Archbald Nyamurova said some of the banks were delivering the POS machines directly to the district offices without going through the finance department.
\nAnd because of this, the audit could not get a record of such machines at the banks\u2019 head offices or at district offices except for Glen View and Budiriro.<\/p>\n
He added that July 2017 reconciliations for one of the banks had not yet been checked because of challenges in the reconciliation process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no integration of the receipting process.
\n\u201cThe receipting process is a separate transaction to the POS machines transaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means if a cashier swipes an amount say $100 from an \u2026 account and manually receipts the same in the BIQ in a \u2026 cash book; there is no cross reference between the two transactions.\u201d
\nWhile Harare mayor Herbert Gomba could not be reached for comment at the time of going to print yesterday, last year, a similar audit into POS machines showed that there was a mismatch in the city\u2019s POS machine registers and their physical count.<\/p>\n
According to minutes of an audit committee that met at the time, the use of POS machines, online and mobile banking and RTGS increased the city\u2019s risk of fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe POS devices are a particular area of vulnerability to HCC because it does not appear as if the finance department was in full control of their deployment across council premises.<\/p>\n
\u201cFindings into the audit were that there was a mismatch between HCC register of POS devices, their physical count and the banks\u2019 register of POS devices deployed.
\n\u201cThe city\u2019s POS devices were not integrated with the BIQ system,\u201d read part of the minutes from the previous audit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE Harare City Council (HCC) could have been swindled of thousands of dollars after a forensic audit revealed that some of its point-of-sale (POS) machines were not linked to its bank accounts. HCC introduced POS machines in 2016 to make life easier for the transacting residents. With the biting cash shortages, Zimbabweans now prefer to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[409,224,91],"class_list":["post-6352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-committee","tag-council","tag-harare"],"yoast_head":"\n