Mwinyi warns over questionable public expenditure in Zanzibar
The President of Zanzibar, Dr Hussein Ali Mwinyi, receives an audit report from Zanzibar’s Controller and Auditor General, Dr Othman Abbas Ali, yesterday. PHOTO | ZANZIBAR STATE HOUSE
What you need to know:
- Zanzibar leader warns public officials over how they handle and manage financial matters, saying they must abide by the rules
Unguja. Zanzibar President Hussein Ali Mwinyi yesterday warned government officials after an audit report showed weaknesses in management and expenditure of public funds.
Dr Mwinyi made the statement after receiving a special audit report from the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) at a function held at State House in Unguja.
He urged the leaders to fulfill their responsibilities, and tackle the shortcomings.
“This report has covered some years back and included a part served by the eighth-phase government that I’m leading. It is my expectation that the defects that continue to appear did not occur in that period,” he said.
He said the report clearly showed that there were many areas where the government would get funding for various development activities but it could not happen due to poor management. He said if the CAG reports would detect similar weaknesses in future, the executives and officials should know that they did not play their party.
“One of my instructions when I swore-in the ministers and permanent secretaries was everyone should visit institutions under their dockets and know them. I did not intend to physically go and leave. I meant you make sure these institutions do their job including revenue collection,” he noted.
He said he decided to involve permanent secretaries and their deputies in receiving the audit reports because they were the executives and accounting officers who were directly responsible for the reports.
He congratulated the CAG for the good work, and said the government has deliberately decided that the CAG reports should be made public for the purpose of improving public expenditure.
“We are the ones who complain about shortage of funding for development projects and forget our responsibility that we are required to ensure that collections and expenditures are fair,” he said.
Presenting the four-volume report, the Controller and Auditor General, Dr Othman Abass Ali, said he identified 171 weaknesses in the audit, including the presence of uncoordinated Treasury accounts.
He said they identified the existence of accounts in the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) and the People’s Bank of Zanzibar which were not integrated into the government expenditure system, while the financial statements of those accounts were recorded manually.
