Accounts committee lacks depth— MP

Business
THE parliamentary portfolio committee on Public Accounts lacks competency, logistical support and manpower to verify reports made by the Controller and Auditor-General.

THE parliamentary portfolio committee on Public Accounts lacks competency, logistical support and manpower to verify reports made by the Controller and Auditor-General, according to its chairperson Webber Chinyadza.

Report by Moses Chibaya

Speaking at a Public Accounts committee workshop on public finance oversight recently, Chinyadza said the situation was also exacerbated by political interest.

“Knowledge, skills and experience is lacking among many MPs. It takes time for MPs to speed up issues and by the time they do, their term of office would be over,” he said.

Chinyadza said that under normal circumstances, the choice as to which committee one would sit in “is not always based on your profession or experience, you are just allocated to a particular portfolio committee”.

This has seen legislators being placed in committees that they don’t have knowledge of. This compromises the work of that committee. A baseline survey on sector specific building requirements for committees of parliament launched last year revealed a 70% skills gap in committees’ capacity to analyse legislation.

“Members of this committee were asked to what extent they were conversant with key statutes governing public finance management such as the Constitution, Public Finance Management Act and Audit Office Act. The majority of the respondents said they were not fully familiar with the statutes,” reads part of the report.

Chinyadza said the inherent weaknesses of parliament in the performance of their duties, as provided for in the Constitution, was that ministers were also appointed from MPs. The “practice has actually compromised most MPs as they may also aspire to be ministers, as a result the extent to which they can openly criticise or investigate their ministers who are in most cases seniors in their parties is very limited”.

The chairperson said when MPs are allocated to certain committees, they start from scratch learning “the auditing language”. He also bemoaned the lack of funds, adding that by the time they received the funds, their term of office would be over.

“They have resource con-straints and because of that, most of the time they [legislators], are unable to do audits outside the main centre which is Harare and this actually constraints their activities,” the MDC-T legislator for Makoni West said.

He appealed to civil society to complement their work instead of competing with them.