The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion, George Guvamatanga, has claimed that the Auditor General’s office “misdirected itself” in its recent report revealing millions of dollars spent by the government on undelivered goods.
The 2023 report by Auditor-General Rhea Kujinga, presented to Parliament, exposed how the government had paid substantial sums of money for a range of items, including 97 vehicles and medical and ICT equipment, but the suppliers failed to deliver these goods to various government ministries and departments.
As reported by NewZimbabwe.com, during a familiarisation tour of the Finance Ministry by the Budget and Finance Parliamentary Committee on Monday, Guvamatanga said that out of the 97 vehicles reportedly undelivered to various ministries and departments, about 20 vehicles were still to be delivered.
He said Treasury was tracking all the vehicles, ICT and medical equipment and other services that were undelivered by suppliers given tenders by the government after it had been flagged by the internal audit unit. Said Guvamatanga:
l can safely say that the auditor general misdirected themselves because, within the three pillars of control, those are regarded as issues known to management so l am not saying they should not have highlighted them but they should have mentioned them and say, government has discovered that there were undelivered vehicles.
I have got the numbers here. There were 167 as of June 9th, 2023, so we procured 167 vehicles and we had 97 of these vehicles that were undelivered but we knew them ministry by ministry and we had already written to those ministries to say, can you make sure that these vehicles are delivered.
As we speak, this number of 97 is now down to about just twenty-something.
Guvamatanga added that the ministry was aware of the “missing cars” and following up hence there was “no need for this excitement” on social media over the issue. He said:
I am sorry to say that the Auditor General is still operating as if we do not have a centralised internal audit unit but we will align them to make sure reports are delivered speedily and to make sure known issues are not reported as new issues.
There is no need for this excitement about motor vehicles, about people not knowing what is happening.
We have all the information and we will continue to track and support the work of both the Auditor General and that of the centralised internal audit unit.
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