By Arret Jatta
The Accountant General, Agnes Macaulay, on Wednesday gave members of the Finance and Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly (FPAC) an update on the status of repayment of outstanding imprests issued to ministries, departments and government officials, totaling D21.7M.
“At the moment, from the last update that we gave, we were able to recover from staff an amount of D4,820,468. We also have evidence that we have fully recovered or retired D8,913,053. These were retirements received from individuals with outstanding imprest as of 30 September 2024. We have an outstanding imprest of D21,726,841,” the accountant general explained.
She also noted that they have imprest that have not completed its cycle.
“As part of the outstanding imprest, we have imprest whose cycle has not completed, which means that these were actually not outstanding…an amount of D417,614. We also have an amount of D575,000, which is classified as imprest that does not exist,” she further explained.
She also stated that the amounts mentioned were raised in error and as such, they are not to be considered as outstanding imprest.
“We would like to know the recovery modes you are using,” nominated NAM Kebba Lang Fofana asked.
“The recovery mode we are doing now is through the payroll, and those are active in the payroll, we are recovering from their salaries. The ones that are not been recovered are not in the payroll. So, we are not recovering from them since 2007 and they remain the same,” she responded.
The chairperson of the committee Alagie S. Darboe also inquired about the mechanisms used to recover imprest from those not in the payroll.
Ms. Macaulay responded by saying that they themselves don’t know how to go about it.
“We requested the support of the committee… the FPAC… in terms of those that are not within our reach so that together, we can be supported in recovering some of these items. But as we speak, there are some names on this list that are deceased and basically, in terms of how we handle this, I think we would need your guidance on this,” she stated.