FCC riddled by corruption, audit reveals

Patricia Edwin
Staff Writer | Tuesday July 9, 2013 00:00

Councillors expressed their concerns at a special full council meeting that was held last week to discuss the report on the Auditor General on Francistown accounts for the year ending March 31, 2009. Finance Committee chairperson Raoboy Mpuang said that the audit showed the council was over-spending by more than 10 percent; that most of the council assets were in debt and that some projects were reported as complete when they were not. The report is supposed to pass through the council for debate before adoption so that it can be sent to the Local Authorities Public Accounts Committee (LAPAC).

Councillor Steven Michael wondered how projects can be reported as complete when that is not the case and no action is taken against the guilty officers.  'These are cases of deliberately misleading the council and the people. It shows that the officer does not take the job, the council, the government or the people seriously,' he said.He added that he also did not understand how the council ended up overspending because consultations were done before projects and the council knew the projected costs.'It is not fair because councillors and officers are supposed to work as a team,' he said.

Sharing the sentiment, Councillor Shadreck Nyeku said that the council needed to investigate the audit queries that were in the report. He said that it was unfair that various officers who were in authority then are not available to address these audit queries but rather those who are in office now have to be answerable at LAPAC.Nyeku said that councillors should be taken seriously when they bring queries about projects in their wards and that action should be taken against officers who sleep on the job or deliberately mislead the council. 'In my view these are deliberate acts of fraud and mismanagement of funds.

Nyeku cited one case where the initial tender of peanut butter to schools was P180,285 but mysteriously ended up costing P257,080. 'These are discrepancies that escape the council and where did this unauthorised variation of P76,755 come from. A difference of 215 buckets from the agreed 505 buckets was ordered, under whose authority? This is not an oversight. It is a deliberate act of theft,' he said.Council Tabengwa Tabengwa complained that the report was coming to the council too late.  'It should be at most two years. Now we are looking at a report from 2009. How is it going to help us? Councillors and officers who were dealing with these issues are now gone. To me this is a serious waste of time,' Tabengwa said.

Mpuang further told the council that at one of their meetings councillors pointed out that council should strictly adhere to financial instructions instead of spending without authority.'We also decided that we should explore better ways of collection to reduce debt and debtors and take relevant action on officers who do not adhere to proper financial procedures,' said Mpuang. He said that some of the issues had been sent to the Directorate on Economic Crime and Corruption (DCEC) while others were the audit committee.'A report on the issues will be compiled and reported after the investigations,' he said.