By Binta Jaiteh
Rohey Malick Lowe, the Mayor of Banjul City Council has questioned the importance of the National Audit Office (NAO).
“People don’t care about audit reports.Nowadays you can do anything, at the end,nothing will come out of it,’’ Mayor Lowe asserted.
The Banjul City Council was on Tuesday appeared before the Parliament’s committee on Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) for Presentation and Consideration of annual Activity Reports and audited Financial Statements for the years ended from 31 December 2020 to 31st December 2022.
Mayor Lowe said it is sad to see some CEOs and financial directors being transferred after some of them being mentioned by audit office.
“This will impose lack of trust in the establishment because you cannot understand that you have a national audit office who brought an audit complain to you mentioning names, upon that you want to find the root of the matter and all of a sudden you realized that the person has been transferred to somewhere” Mayor Lowe remarked.
Adding: ‘’the minimum you will have is to be transferred to somewhere else this is sad and it will not make justice to our establishment if I don’t mention this.’’
‘’We don’t have any problem with the transfer but allow us to settle in-house differences, allowthose responsible to understand that what they have done is serious matter,’’ she reiterated.
According to the Mayor, BCC has a lot of issues and when the audit comes people will understand better what she is talking about.
She emphasized that the names that are mentioned in the audit report don’t care but the people outside will blame the head of the council without any reason.
Alhagie S Darboe, chairperson of the FPAC committee replied that NAO is established by the constitution by that all institutions should submit their accounts to the audit office for auditing. Then after that, she said the assembly would review and adopt it and if there were queries the assembly would take a decision.
He told the mayor that NAO cannot be regardedas a futile institution based on whatever happento the outcome of their audit exercise. He said it was the role of the parliament to act on the next steps and there was a shortcoming to that effect. He disclosed that it was the main reason why the committee had to make strong resolutions during its last session.
“As a nation this is where we are weak at. After an audit is done and the disciplinary measures that should be taken, are not done, some people will see auditors’ work as a futile exercise,’’ he observed. He was quick to add: ‘’very soon that will be cleared, the way we are doing our resolutions on the reports the police will act.’’ He assured that with collective actions from National Assembly, government, audit office and the police no one would be able toundermine the report of the NAO.
