By Lwazi Dlamini
PRIME Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini has called on stakeholders in society to relook reports coming out of Auditor General Timothy Matsebula’s office and scrutinise them.
Dlamini said this during an Editors Forum meeting on Thursday when responding to questions relating to allegations of wrongdoing at the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).
Firing from all cylinders when addressing the question on allegations of E210 million from the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) being unaccounted for when he was still the CEO, the PM was unflinching in his responses and questioning the motives of the AG’s office and Matsebula.
“I have been avoiding saying this but maybe this is the right forum. The NDMA has been audited eight times over the Covid-19 scenario by internal auditors, SNG, Auditor General Office and other international auditors. All the auditors gave an unqualified audit report which is a clean audit. Only management issues were raised which had to be corrected,” the PM said.
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“But the Auditor General wants to use incorrect information and send it to the media to create a narrative. It’s him alone who has issues. Perhaps we need to look now if the Auditor’s General reports can be relied upon.”
He said it is unfortunate that the unsuspecting nation has been made to understand that E180 million disappeared at NDMA during his time as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) “and now a further E30 million hence the reports of E210 million.”
The PM said this points to incompetence in the Auditor General’s office and also the AG didn’t say the money was stolen but it could not be accounted for.
“All these issues were resolved while I was still at NDMA, and I maintain that we need to re-think if the reports of the AG’s office can be relied upon. We need to consider if the AG is competent and we also need to consider if the AG’s office is not corrupt,” the Minister bellowed, leaving the whole room gob-smacked.
Jumping to the PM’s defence regarding the allegations of the E210 million disappearance at NDMA, Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg said the audited report on NDMA does not say the money was stolen.
“Number one, no one is saying in the report that money has been stolen. All that being said, the audit gave a clean audit. It said there were issues around procurement.
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The government procurement system takes months, it is a big issue at Cabinet and we are trying to fix it. It takes months to buy something. Covid-19 was an unprecedented crisis.”
“I will use sanitiser as an example. in one week, the cost of sanitizer went down by half and when you do an audit a year later, it will be difficult to explain.
The Auditor General’s report says processes were not followed but immediately it sucked in this ugly narrative of corruption.
Luckily as Minister of Finance at the time of the Covid-19 crisis, I was in constant contact with the NDMA CEO at the time who is now the PM. We talked every day,” Rijkenberg explained.