By: Binta Jaiteh
After a thorough scrutiny of Banjul City Council’s financial report as of as 31st December 2019 -2020, the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) decided not to adopt the report of the council due to the serious queries and recommendations by National Audit report.
Kebba Lang Fofana who deputised for the Chairperson said “We should be careful of the things we say. If councils didn’t find summary notes to their accounts the auditors won’t engage them. 2019 notes were copied for 2020 which made the auditors to insert information which is not real and that is unethical.”
Bakary Trawally, Director of Audit for Municipalities and Councils at National Audit Office queried over the lack of record in councils which result to conflict during auditing period and credible financial statement.
Mr. Trawally noted that the council’s financial statement is not provided for BCC neither NAO but it is prepared for the external users., adding financial statement should be prepared so that users can make best use of it if.
However, he added that if records are not kept it will be difficult to assume some of the figures that cannot explain and there will be a missing figure and people will start to say millions has been missed in a particular institution.
He stated that, looking at the findings improper maintenance of main cash book says regulation 902 of the financial and accounting manual for local government authorities place emphasis the cash book which is the main book of original entry of councils which all the cash and cash receipt.
Director of Audit suggested that the management should ensure that the cash books for the year 2019 and 2020 are rebuilt and prescribed by the financial and accounting manual for local government authorities in order to draft a credible financial statement.
Mr. Trawally further recommended that the adjusted cash book for 2019 and 2020 presented were not in line with the requirement of the above finance and accounting principles and adjourned the engagement of the council till April for the council to respond to some of the queries made during the consideration stage of the report.