By Mama A. Touray
Cherno Amadou Sowe, the Internal Audit Director at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, on Wednesday before the Local Government Commission of Inquiry stated that their role (internal audit office) is to look at systems and render opinions based on audit findings.
Mr. Sowe, as he continued his testimony, explained that “on the part of the directorate, we don’t have the power to sanction the council; our role is to look at the systems and render an opinion base on our audit findings, we don’t have an enforcement mechanism.”
He added that their findings are reported to management with recommendations and that when there is non-compliance on the part of management in terms of data or making information available, they document that in their report then whoever is responsible will see that this is a limitation.
Lead counsel Yakarr Cox referred the witness to page eleven of the internal audit conducted at Basse Area Council which stated that during the audit process, the audit team could not audit the field management of the council thus no field records were presented to the audit team after several requests and follow-ups. The audit team further requested Bank statements of GTB accounts; manage by the council; however, at the time of this audit management has not provided information related to the bank accounts of the audit team review.
In his response to this, Mr. Sowe said once the engagement team is on the ground they will make a request for documents and information that should be made available to them, so where that is not forthcoming they call that audit scoop limitation.
Audit Scoop limitation he defined to the commission as information that was not available to the audit team so they could not verify the data, they could not run an opinion on that, and some of the Bank statements were not provided to the team on the ground.
The report he said was sent to the chief executive officer of the Basse Area Council, copied to the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Religious Affairs, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Secretary General, Auditor General national, audit office and the Accountant General and the Chief of Staff at the office of the president.
Director Sowe on the observation made by the audit team said “Councils normally will cooperate based on standing orders that are what determines the way they conduct their meetings, it is a rule that governs the way business is conducted by the council.”
Further to their observations, he said there was no such standing order, which means that by implication “If you don’t have a standing order then there is no governance process that can be used to conduct meetings. And we think that is necessary for the council to function effectively.”
Before ending his testimony, he said at some points the audit team was told by the council that they have drafted a standing order, and was made available but there was no process to validate or formal approval of the standing order, and minutes were not provided, the council made to adopt these standing orders.