By Mama A. Touray & Sainabou Sanneh
The National Audit Office of the Gambia Thursday organised a day-long capacity building training for its auditees to discuss pertinent issues such as major challenges encountered in the auditing process and pave ways to address those gaps.
Addressing the participants, the Auditor General, Modou Ceesay highlighted the objective of the workshop which aimed at identifying challenges and gaps in the auditing exercise for better service delivery.
Mr. Cessay said the office expects that after a candid, constructive interaction, necessary actions will be taken by all parties to address the identified gaps and challenges.
“Of recent the office audit report findings have been in the limelight and since those findings emanated from audits conducted in the public institutions, you will all agree with me that the majority of the findings in our audit reports are repetitive findings and questions have been raised as to what has been done or is being done for those recurring audit findings. On our part as auditors this workshop is our way of working towards addressing some of these issues,” he said.
Mr. Ceesay said the work they do as the National Audit Office is compounded with misconceptions by the public and by extension even some of their stakeholders including auditees which he said the office is trying to address.
Auditor General Ceesay continued: “it is good for public understanding that a National Audit office (sometimes referred to as a Supreme Audit Institution) is established to promote accountability in the management and use of public resources specifically for the financial audits. This is meant to provide assurance that an institution’s financial statements fairly reflect the revenues collected and expenditure incurred.”
Ceesay stressed that the demands for SAls have now expanded to include considerations of how well public bodies perform their work by typically looking at the economy, efficiency and effectiveness, use of resources and service delivery.
He postulated that the forum is quite fundamental in their work as it connects with the priority outcomes of the NAO’s Strategic Development Plan (2020- 2024) which include: “increase compliance with laws and regulations for better follow-up on audit findings and recommendations among others.
