BY NED GAGAHE
The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) plans to roll out Community Participatory Audits (CPA) to all 50 constituencies across the country in an effort to strengthen transparency, accountability and public confidence in the management of Constituency Development Funds (CDF).
Speaking at the launch of the Community Participatory Audit initiative at Heritage Park Hotel yesterday, Auditor General David Dennis said the programme represents a new approach to auditing public funds by directly involving citizens and civil society organisations in the audit process.
“Our vision is to roll this out to all 50 constituencies across the Solomon Islands in the coming years,” Mr Dennis said.
“But we cannot do this alone. We will need more capacity and more resources to deliver this to everyone. We need the continued support of our government, our donors and everyone in the room today.”
Mr Dennis said the OAG’s mandate to audit CDF is grounded in the Constitution and further strengthened under the Constituency Development Funds Act 2023, which explicitly names the Auditor General as the external auditor of the fund.
With CDF now accounting for approximately $250 million annually, or about six percent of the national budget, Mr Dennis said effective oversight has become both a constitutional and developmental necessity.
The CPA model allows community members to work alongside auditors to verify whether projects funded through CDF have actually been delivered.
“While a traditional auditor might look at a receipt in an office, a community participatory audit allows constituents to verify if the school building was actually built, if the water tank exists, or if supplies reached the intended recipients,” he said.
Mr Dennis said the approach was inspired by successful citizen-participatory audit programmes in the Philippines and has been adapted to suit Solomon Islands’ context with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.
The audits focus on compliance with the CDF Act 2023, procurement practices at constituency level and verification that funds are used for their intended purposes.
He said the initiative responds to growing public concerns over the management of CDF funds.
According to findings from the National Statistics Office in 2019, about 64.2 percent of Solomon Islanders do not believe CDF has had a positive impact on their communities.
“The public perception is one of unfair distribution, abuse of funds and a lack of good governance,” Mr Dennis said.
He added that traditional audits often found constituency reporting to be unreliable or outdated, limiting its usefulness to the public.
Photo credit: Ned Gagahe
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