Kamikamica on government spending ‘Audit definitely on the cards’

DEPUTY Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica says an independent audit is definitely on the cards for Government in the days to come.

He said a lot of discrepancies had been noted throughout the years and many instances had to do with wastage of funds.

Mr Kamikamica cited the example of the public works department which previously worked with a budget of around $40 million, but today operated on a budget of over $100m.

“I mean, that may be inflation, but it certainly seems like a big jump from the previous allocation,” he said.

“So we have a minister who’s in charge of that area and we’ll have a good look at what we need to do. You look around at all the houses, you look at the hospitals, they are in disrepair. Why? Because they got rid of the PWD.

“There’s absolutely no government department that looks at continuing continuous maintenance to try and maintain these properties.”

He said there was a need to ensure the upkeep of Government-owned property was maintained.

“You know, certainly there’s a need to understand where expenditures had been spent over the last few years. I don’t need to tell you but you can see issues that have existed.

“The swimming pool in Lautoka, still not completed, went from $2.5m to $12.5m, $10m wastage. The Water Authority digger, $33m for a 15-month lease, I think. So these are the kinds of things that we need to understand.

“The Minister of Finance, which is Mr Biman Prasad, certainty will develop controls to ensure this kind of excesses don’t happen again. All money spent, that’s taxpayer money, is spent in the right areas and we have good discipline in place to make sure we don’t waste money.”

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