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| National |
| Pac tells Foreign Affairs to be serious |
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by
Juliet Chimwaga, 02 October 2006
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11:39:15
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The Public Accounts Committee (Pac) of Parliament on Wednesday accused senior officers at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of inefficiency after its director of international cooperation Joseph Chiteyeye failed to respond to the Auditor-General’s queries on management of finances in the ministry.
Chiteyeye—who was standing in for principal secretary Ben Mbewe, currently with President Bingu wa Mutharika in Australia—said his office did not see the questions prior to the meeting with Pac.
Because of this, he said he could not explain the excess unauthorised expenditure of about K12.6 million in the 2002/03 revenue account and six overdrawn deposit accounts in 2001/02 and 2002/03 financial years.
“I regret to inform the honourable committee that my office was not provided with the questions on these queries and, therefore, it has not been possible for us to come up with the responses,” he said.
But deputy Auditor-General Sam Gomani wondered why Chiteyeye did not have information on the issues as the audit queries were sent to the ministry some time back.
“Maybe [the] committee may wish to know from [Chiteyeye] if his office takes these audit reports seriously because even if they claim that they didn’t receive the recent questions, they had the audit reports which they had to work on long time ago,” said Gomani.
A Pac member, MP for Zomba Lisanjala Winston Chikalimba, blamed the ministry for tabling outdated responses (of 27 October, 2005) which, he said, showed that the officers did not attend to the queries since last year.
Pac vice-chairperson Aleke Banda asked Chiteyeye to provide the committee with answers before it rises this week.
“As the Auditor-General says, we didn’t expect you to come here with no responses at all since you have had these queries for a long time,” said Banda.
Chiteyeye also failed to give the committee documentary evidence to show that his ministry paid pension funds worth about K2 million to the Ministry of Labour for workers who served under Foreign Affairs in South Africa .
Another Pac member, MP for Nkhotakota South Aden Mbowani, said Chiteyeye should produce pay slips of the people who received the money because he knew that those who were working in South Africa that have not received their benefits.
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