Parliament audits 2012 budget

Executing powers vested in them by the constitution and the parliamentary standing order to audit all ministries, departments and agencies, one of the five Appropriation Sub-Committees has interviewed several MDAs on budget allocated to them for the year 2012. According to the Finance Committee Chairman, Hassan Sheriff, MP, a third of the MDAs failed to show up without reason. He warned that if they failed to appear before the committees their budget would be withheld. He said that as a committee they were expecting to interview all MDAs about their budget expenditure for 2012 before their 2013 budget would be allocated to them. The budget defending will run through Thursday. Another Appropriation Sub-Committee chaired by Claude Kamanda, MP, questioned the Kenema District Council, Audit Service Sierra Leone and The Port Loko District Council. The committee said they were impressed with the Kenema District Council as they were “quite on top of situation” and were able to defend their budget for 2012 “very well”. Their documents were said to have tallied with their explanations. The Audit Service said they only receive money from government and nothing from donors. Speaking the institution the Deputy Auditor General, Samuel Tamba Momoh said they did not receive all what they had asked for in the 2012 budget. He said the institution was responsible to audit all councils and local governments and had now added to that list the Airports Authority, NASSIT, Ports Authority and NRA. Momoh went on: The audit service sometimes get so much auditing to do that they have to outsource some of the job to private firms which means they only get 10% of the pay as they only provide supervision and do not do the work. He said his institution pays their retired staff their gratuity.