Finance secretary George Guvamatanga has dismissed the Auditor General (AG) report on undelivered motor vehicles as “misdirected” saying the issues raised were already known to management.
Guvamatanga said this during a familiarisation tour with the Clemence Chiduwa-led Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance.
Acting AG Rheah Kujinga’s report revealed the rot in government ministries, departments, parastatals and State-owned entities, exposing that contracted companies had not delivered vehicles to various government departments despite being paid.
The report for the year ended December 2023 showed that payments of ZWL$1,7 billion and US$2,3 million were made towards the procurement of vehicles which were never delivered.
Guvamatanga, however, said the process of auditing is in technical terms what is regarded as a three pillar process which involves the originator, the government, an internal audit unit and an external audit unit which is represented by the Auditor General.
He said there was a gap before the coming in of the President Emmerson Mnangagwaadministration as the government did not have a centralised audit unit which was then created over the course of the past four years and is now in place and operational.
“We had other things like from other ministries, various medical equipment, so the work of the internal audit had already discovered that there were undelivered goods and communication had already been sent to various ministries and departments to say can you ensure that in line with our regulations and our laws these goods are delivered,” said Guvamatanga.
“So I was then highlighting that by actually highlighting it as a finding, I can safely say that the office of the AG actually misdirected themselves because within the three pillars of control those are actually regarded as issues known to management.
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“So I am not saying that they should not have highlighted them but they should have highlighted and said the government discovered that there were undelivered vehicles because I have the number here.”
He added: They were 167 as at June 9, 2023, so we procured 167 vehicles and we had 97 that were undelivered but we knew them ministry by ministry and we had already written to those ministries to say can you make sure that these vehicles are delivered and as we speak this number of 97 has gone down to about 20 something.
“We will need to align the work of the Auditor General with that of the centralised internal audit unit so that they fully understand how the three pillars of control work.
“I am sorry to say and I will say it that the Auditor General is still operating as if we do not have a centralised internal audit unit. But we will align them and say how do you work together with the centralised audit unit to make sure that reports are delivered speedily and to make sure that issues that are known are then not reported as if they are new issues.”
He said the reason why they created the internal audit unit was to actually create an opportunity for audit to happen throughout the year.
“So 18 months later, you are being told that this did not work according to plan.
“This did not go according to plan. There was no remediation in between, so we have created a central audit unit to cover that gap and to also help in speeding up the process.”
The AG has been consistent in exposing the rot in government, although no action has been taken against the culprits.
