Zacc gets tough on AG reports non-compliance

By The Standard and Newsday | Jan. 31, 2022 | 2 Min read

Speaking at Zacc’s inaugural accounting and financial reporting seminar last Friday, the anti-graft body’s deputy chairperson, Kuziva Murapa said their investigations had shown that most public institutions were ignoring the recommendations instead of acting on them.

BY PRIVELEDGE GUMBODETE

THE Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) has said it will start implementing recommendations made by the Auditor-General (AG) Mildred Chiri in her reports that expose massive corruption in government ministries, departments and parastatals.

“AG reports, which list misdemeanours have not received the serious attention they deserve from the institutions audited. I say so because according to internal audit reports received from some public institutions on implementation of the AG’s recommendations we had requested, they revealed gross non-compliance with implementation of the AG’s recommendations,” Murapa said.

The failure by some public institutions to implement the AG’s recommendations has resulted in massive loss of public funds at public entities that are funded by taxpayers.

“The non-implementation of the AG’s recommendations has seen millions of dollars of undelivered goods that had been identified in the AG’s audits not being followed up and recovered. This resulted in a huge loss to the public entities and taxpayers who fund these entities,” Murapa said.

Zacc commissioner Thandiwe Mlobane said the anti-graft body had developed a toolkit to monitor implementation of the AG’s recommendations.

“Thorough spot checks and system reviews carried out by the compliance and systems review department, the AG and internal auditors’ findings, Zacc developed a prevention of corruption toolkit which comprises a risk management policy, due diligence policy, information security policy, gifts and donations policy, unsolicited proposals/bids policy, anti-fraud and anti-corruption policy, whistleblower and complaints handling policy, code of ethics; council/service charter integrity committee, anti-corruption desk and anti-corruption champion,” she said.