MUTARE- The Office of the Auditor General will soon release a comprehensive audit report on the state of disaster risk management in the wake of Cyclone Idai, its officials have said.
By Donald Nyarota
Speaking at an all stakeholders meeting towards the formulation of a strategic plan for the OAG, Acting deputy auditor general Bonface Mukwenga said they have instituted a special audit into the rapid response program for Cyclone Idai.
He said a special audit will also be extended to public interest areas including the ZUPCO service, which has courted controversy among stakeholders over the efficiency of the subsidized financing model.
On Command agriculture, Makwenga said the audit into the affairs of the controversial scheme was based on an integrated evaluation of the its financials as well as an evaluation of the effectiveness of the project.
Mukwenga said ZUPCO public transport service audit as well as the Command agriculture audit will be conducted as a matter of urgency, to evaluate the efficiency of the projects.
“We have gone in with some special audit for Cyclone Idai which is financial cum value for money because we thought its an important area of disaster risk management, we are finalizing the findings, and we believe they will help us as the public sector.
“We have instituted an audit into the operations of Command Agriculture because we believe it is pertinent that we do that to inform future interventions.
“The value for money or performance audit goes beyond financials it looks at operations and programs it goes deeper than numbers and this is strategic because it also enables us to push towards realization of Sustainable Development Goals,”
He added,”We want to be pushing towards realization of SDGs, and for us to ensure that we achieve these goals we need to able to track our progress as a country through performance audits so that government can introspect on its progress on SDGs.”
Mukwenga said the OAG is in the process of engaging stakeholders as they come up with a new strategic plan for the next five years, as the current tenure of the strategic plan lapses this year.
He said the OAG was seized with promoting a proactive approach to public finance management by embracing multifaceted audit formats, including regularity and special audits, to maximize benefits from public finances.
“We don’t want to hammer public institutions when they incur losses or when a problem has occurred, we don’t want to just focus on results but try and prevent certain losses that can occur.
“As an institution we need also to be proactive and not only reactive so that we can ensure citizens can benefit from the Office of the Auditor General, because we are a watchdog of parliament and our role is not find fault but also to promote good public finance management,” said Mukwenga.
