By Mama A. Touray
The Director of Internal Audit at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Cherno Amadou Sowe recently testified at the Local Government Commission of Inquiry (LGCI) and touched on different areas that are shortcomings of the Basse Area Council, saying the council is losing because the council paying housing rent for the chairman (of the council).
At the LGCI holding at the Djembe Hotel, Senegambia he said “The audit team found out that the council has rented a house within the Greater Banjul Area for the Chairperson to use whenever he comes (GBA); because of this the council is losing for paying the rent for the chairman and also paying him night allowance”.
The apartment according to the witness was rented and furnished for him from 2021 at an annual cost of sixty thousand dalasi.
He added that despite this arrangement, the Chairperson was still paid Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA). He testified that DSA was not supposed to be paid to the Chairman, but the Council was paying him.
The Council, according to him, has claimed that they have canceled the tenancy agreement, but the auditors were not shown evidence of cancellation of the rent.
Sowe however, told the commission that the audit report also discovered that the Director of Finance and most of the senior officials of the Basse Area Council do not possess the minimum required qualification for their respective offices.
He testified that this is reflected by the way the finance department was being run because there was no professionalism.
Director Sowe further testified that the Audit Report also observed that there have been several projects undertaken by Basse Area Council, but the council did not debate those projects to give them the necessary approval.
He said the team found out that the contract committee of the council was not meeting regularly to debate contract issues before awarding the contract.
Sowe went on to add that the team discovered that there was no development activity for Basse Area Council in the 2022 budget. He explained that the council said most of the development projects for the year 2021 were not implemented fully and they were carried forward to 2022.
He said the council also decried funding problems. He added that this violates the Local Government Act which provides that 60% of the revenue should go back to the people for development.
“The audit team has observed that the council has been paying the medical bills of its staff, but there has not been any medical benefits policy adopted by the councils,” he said.
He continued: “So, these were not based on any policy because if this is supposed to happen the council needs to have a staff medical policy”.
Sowe informed the commission that the council also collected fees for market stalls from people, but did not allocate stalls to them. He said people were paying D500 as an application fee to obtain a stall from the Basse new market.
He testified that the record revealed by the audit team revealed that hundreds or thousands of people applied for canteens.
More so, he said the audit team was not able to establish a stall on whether the people who applied for the canteens and failed to secure them were given back their money.
“We know for sure that the number that has applied was way more than the available canteen to be allocated,” he said.
The Director of Internal Audit added that during the audit they requested certain information but the council failed to provide what was requested, which was the reason why the auditors could not verify the data or provide an opinion.