TRANSPARENCY Solomon Islands (TSI) has commended the provincial secretary Jeffery Wickham to call on the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) for an immediate audit of Western province’s coffers – before a new Western provincial government is formed.
Wickham said funds have been misused and the only way to find out is to carry out auditing of financial statements that contain funds the Western provincial government has expended in the past years.
He urges the new government to comply with Financial Management Ordinance as required under the law.
TSI sighted the OAG report on provincial governments in 2014 to 2016 revealed Western provincial government has made some significant improvement during these years as the number of issues identified and the severity of the issues were reducing.
The Auditor’s office recommends provincial governments to control its account payables to meet its obligation on a timely basis, comply with Provincial Financial Management practice.
Corruption gravely undermined development in the country. Clear examples of such corrupt acts undermining our development can be noted from the 2017 Auditor General’s report that TSI have sighted.
The said report clearly shows blatant corrupt acts of some public servants within some of our government line ministries.
TSI praise Auditor’s General Office in fighting corruption by identifying corrupt practices and reporting them to the appropriate authorities like Leadership Code Commission (LCC), Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), and Police.
–TSI PRESS
