By Mama A. Touray
The Director of Internal Audit at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Cherno Amadou Sowe on Wednesday testified at the Local Government Commission of Inquiry that currently they are not posting staff to local government authorities due to capacity issues.
Director Sowe made this testimony when he appeared before the ongoing local government commission of inquiry at Djembe Hotel in Senegambia.
Cherno Amadou Sowe in his testimony reiterated that “Currently we are not posting staff to the local government authorities as at the moment because we have some capacity issues that is why we are not able to post internal audit staff to every ministry, mostly at the moment we have internal auditors stationed in all the ministries, government departments, and agencies”.
Mr. Sowe added that where the need arises and have the capacity and the manpower to do that then they will conduct internal audit service for most of these local government authorities.
LGAs, he said are in a unique situation as they are quasi-government. And was quick to add that local authorities are not necessarily central government to the extent and that they provide internal audit services to them because they do have government subvention.
“I think what we will encourage is to have local councils establish their own internal audit functions, build the capacity of those internal audit functions so that they can carry out internal audit services for the local authorities,” he told the commission.
Mr. Sowe, however, disclosed that when they post internal auditors to the various ministries, functionally they report to the director of internal audit, and administratively they report to the permanent secretary of the ministry they are posted to.
Also, he said whatever report is carried out by the internal auditors at the local government, they sanction the audit, review the report and then sign the report, and their internal auditors at various ministries serve as agents for the director of the internal audit at the ministry of finance and economic affairs.
Meanwhile, Director Sowe highlighted the role of his directorate to the commission stating that it’s the directorate’s primary responsibility to ensure that the directorate functions in the way it’s intended to function on a day-to-day basis.
He added that the directorate was established by the government to provide internal audit services to the government informed by the public finance act.
He said the directorate also makes sure that they provide internal audit services by way of making sure government policies are implemented and to make sure that they provide assurance services across the government.
The national audit Act, according to him is an external audit arm of the government, mandated to provide external audit services to the government of the Gambia.
He explained to the Commission that “There is a difference between internal and external audit. With Internal audit, we basically report to management and our findings are addressed to the management, we look at system operation and see where their deficiency is, document those, and report it to management with the view to making sure that management looks at those and address whatever deficiency we can identify”.
He further explained that in the case of the internal audit and the national audit office, they have different reporting mandates and national audit reports to the national assembly, and that is where the difference lies.
He added that sometimes their work could be complementary but most often the national audit looks at the report that the internal audit provides but they have different functions.
Cherno Amadou Sowe who testified at the Commission said he holds a Master’s in business administration, served at the Central Bank for nine years, Gambia West Finance Association and currently serving the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs as the Director of Internal Audits for over two months.
