The office of the Auditor-General is scheduled to audit COVID-19 funds amid reports of rampant abuse by senior government officials.
This comes when Dr Obadiah Moyo who was the Minister of the Ministry of Health and Child Care has been fired after he allegedly abused the funds.
Auditor-General Mrs Mildred Chiri has ordered all Government departments to furnish her with details with regards to COVID-19 funds and is now waiting for responses.
Speaking to The Herald in an interview, the Auditor-General said they intend to assess the observance of principles of corporate governance, the control mechanism, and the gaps with regards to the management of the funds. She said:
Our desire is not to conduct a witch-hunt but to assist Government so that it does not unnecessarily lose resources. We will write to them on our observations, where we feel requires improvement.
We will be looking at such issues as control systems, whether they are strong or weak, at how are records of Covid-19 donations administered, at the distribution of such donations. So it is a whole package. It is a systems audit to ensure that there is enough control mechanism in handling the donations. The idea being to improve and ensure value for money given that we are still in a pandemic and every donation counts regardless of how huge or small.
Chiri also indicated that the audit was delayed by the lockdown that was initially imposed on the country in March as a measure to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The Auditor-General’s previous reports exposed grand corruption and poor Finance management practices in the majority of government departments and parastatals.
More: The Herald