Expert: Govt ignores CAG

The Controller and Auditor General (CAG)  is mandated to audit public spending in the country. The sitting CAG at the moment is Mr Ludovick Utouh. The office of the CAG audits, compiles and issues its reports annually. 

By Ludger Kasumuni,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

• Policy Forum says the CAG has been submitting audit queries, but no action has been taken

Dar es Salaam. The government is yet to respond and work on queries that have been directed by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) over unqualified health expenses amounting to multi-billion shillings for the past 15 years.

 

The expenses, among others include ghost workers’ pay to the tune of Sh8 billion up to 2005/6 financial year, Sh2 billion overseas health expenses that were also qualified in 2007/8 financial year, Sh4 billion spent on ghost workers in 2011/12 and Sh6 billion in 2012/13 financial year, according to data released by an NGO, Policy Forum, yesterday.

Presenting a paper at a meeting organised by Policy Forum, the SIKIKA head of governance and finance, Mr Florian Schweitzer, said that since 1999 up to this year the ministry of Health and Social Welfare has remained silent without working on audit queries indicating an impasse in handling health budgetary problems.

“The Controller and Auditor General has been submitting similar problems relating to audit queries since 1999, but no action has been taken by the government. The problems include payment of ghost workers and unqualified health expenses spent abroad. This creates a state of indecision when dealing with health governance issues,” he says.

According to him, although the government has been increasing health budget every year, chronic problem has been inability to handle audit queries for several years.

He said under the 2013/14 and 2014/15 budget estimates, the government has increased recurrent health expenditure from Sh28.6 billion to Sh31.72 billion which is an increase of 12.3 per cent.

Mr Schweitzer also attacked the government for marginal allocation of funds for essential medicines which has been negatively affecting health rights of the poor people.

Further data released by him indicate that between 2010/11 and 2013/14 financial years, the government has been allocating not more than Sh25 billion for essential medicines which has never met the rising demand for them.

In his paper, the health governance expert, also shows another weakness in terms of non-inclusion of health priority in the national Vision 2015.