It’s criminal to refuse to be audited – Kafwaya
REPORTS that the Auditor General’s office has threatened to abandon auditing the Ministry of Agriculture following refusal by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry to avail audit documents is not only illegal but also unfortunate, Mutotwe Kafwaya has said.
Mr Kafwya, the Lunte Patriotic Front Member of Parliament said this in parliament yesterday when he raised a matter urgent of public importance directed at the leader of government business in the house on the refusal by the Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary.
He said Emeritus Archbishop Telesphore Mpundu has been apt in stating that the arrest of Dr Dick Sichembe, the Auditor General was meant to intimidate and blackmail him so that he could fail to expose the economic transgressions of the UPND government against Zambians.
He stated that Bloomberg had also reported on the arrest of Dr Sichembe and had linked the arraignment to the ongoing conversations around Zambias external debt restructuring.
“As a country, this is time to put a full stop to the nonsense and we should start doing sense. We must realise that both internal and external stakeholders have opened their eyes and ears wide on this salient matter and many others. I will remind you that Dr. Dick Sichembe is being blackmailed over PAC allowances for which the executive has arrested him and others. And some beneficiaries of these allowances are being protected by the same executive.”
“Now we have become aware that the executive has been refusing to give the Auditor General information on fertiliser procurement so that he could conclude his audit in line with his constitutional mandate. This is catastrophic for our nation,” Mr Kafwaya said.
He said it was the first time in the history of the country that a Permanent Secretary had refused to avail documents for audit by the Auditor General’s office.
Mr Kafwaya said it was sad that the Secretary to Cabinet and the Secretary to the Treasury ware aware about the refusal by Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Green Mbozi to avail documents for audits but that two had done nothing about it.