PM QUESTIONS, DOUBTS AG OFFICE’S COMPETENCE, REPORTS

MBABANE – Prime Minister (PM) Russell Dlamini has called to question the competence of the Auditor General’s Office and further cast doubt on the reliability of the audit reports it produces.

Responding to media questions during the breakfast meeting with the Editors’ Forum of Eswatini, the PM said the AG, Timothy Matsebula’s reports, on the books of the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), left a lot to be desired. Dlamini is former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NDMA. During his term as the CEO, the AG pointed out serious alleged accounting irregularities during the COVID-19 era.

Unqualified

He said while all other auditors found that the books were unqualified, only the AG’s reports pointed to the unaccountability of funds. He wondered if the reports were not inspired by that he (Dlamini) was the CEO of the NDMA during the period under review. NDMA has been audited eight times now, by professional auditors over the COVID-19 era, such as the internal office of the Ministry of Finance; the Eswatini Public Procurement Regulatory Agency (ESPPRA) and SNG.  We need to rethink if the reports of the auditor general can be relied upon. We need to reconsider if there is no corruption in the Office of the Auditor General. What is motivating all this negative publicity about the NDMA?” the PM questioned.

He said other auditors found that there was only a management issue that needed to be corrected and that all the management issues pointed out by the auditors were corrected.
“It seems that every time the auditor general audits NDMA, he wants to use incorrect information and spread it to the media. If professional auditors produce clean audits and the auditor general always counteracts that, and all the time it’s him alone.

“It’s important that we have to begin to look at whether the reports of the auditor general can now be relied upon. The country now understands that there is E180 million missing from the NDMA. There was never a sum of E180 million missing there. Now, he has actually said there is another E30 million. All that is false, I can surely tell you. It actually points to the incompetence in that office. It is so sad that the whole country believes this thing that is being written,” the PM said. Dlamini also blamed the media for failing to properly analyse what the AG’s report stated. “The auditor general did not say that the money was stolen. The technical term is unaccounted for. But all that is being turned to mean that there is corruption and money missing,” he said.

He said the NDMA management had articulated its position on the matters, even issuing a media statement to shed light. The PM was responding to a question by The Nation Magazine Editor, Bheki Makhubu, who asked the PM to come clear on his work when he was NDMA CEO. In his audit report tabled in 2022 in Parliament, the AG found that names of institutions such as, the Bethel Court, Esibayeni Lodge, Global Village, Siteki Hotel and others, had allegedly received funds in a manner that disregarded accounting regulations. This was where there was unmonitored accommodation expenditure for quarantine and isolation of health officers and COVID-19 patients.

The layoff fund was also not spared from audit queries, as E4 million was said to have been unaccounted for. After finding the discrepancies, the AG wrote: “I expressed concern that layoff employees were denied their rightful entitlement and their poverty status may have been worsened as a result of the diverted funds.” Similarly, the personal protective equipment (PPE), attracted audit queries with over E2. 5 million unsupported payments made to companies. In the report’s pages, payments to beneficiaries of relief aid made through Mobile Money were also found to be questionable. The Auditor General Timothy Matsebula did not respond to questions from this newspaper yesterday.

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