Auditor General Deodat Sharma made this disclosure yesterday when he and a team from the AOG appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday and were grilled about the AOG’s budgetary allocation for the year.
As regards the budgetary allocation of some $173 million for 2009 and how it was spent, PPP MP Bibi Shadick called on Sharma to explain how the unit spent approximately $124 million on staff upgrading. At the last PAC meeting, the AOG had submitted a summary of the total sum of monies spent on staffing, which amounted to $133 million.
Sharma explained that the AOG has a total of 29 staff members and the department recruited staff, including some 10 assistant auditors as well as 10 senior audit clerks, through internal promotions. He said that some senior audit clerks were offered the assistant auditor positions but turned down same because of the salary offered. He said external applicants were also interviewed for the vacant positions but they were also not impressed with the salary offered.
According to Shadick, the PAC is in possession of the AOG’s report for 2009 and among the items highlighted by the report was that the office had not been utilising mileage allowances as well as other allowances associated with fieldwork. She said that the AOG needed to put itself in order, adding that as explained by Sharma the department is “top heavy” and it does not have the necessary junior staff to carry out its mandate. She also questioned how the AOG filtered in the recent 6% awarded to public servants in its budget this year and posited that the AOG had fore-planned the inclusion of the recent increase in wages and salaries. She said that monies which were unused, which totalled some $9 million, could have been spent on additional staff.
Sharma stated that all monies allocated to the AOG for the year, which were not used, will be returned to the Ministry of Finance. He said that the AOG is also working to upgrade its staffing in 2010 and plans to recruit some 50 persons.
