County To Adopt A Transparent Financial Management System
Torit County in Eastern Equatoria State has moved to adopt a transparent financial management system to prevent loss of public resources, an official has said. 20 May 2013 Torit County Commissioner German Charles Ojok. [Gurtong | File] By Peter Lokale Nakimangole TORIT, 19 May 2013 [Gurtong] – "My administration will be welcomed by a few who do not like consuming public resources and wanting the resources utilized accordingly but will always be opposed by those individuals or groups in the opposite side," said Torit County Commissioner German Charles Ojok The move to adopt a financial management system follows recommendations by a committee earlier formed to study and come up with measures after investigating into missing money from land allotment in Torit. The commissioner strongly welcomes the recommendations to avoid future misuse of funds by civil servants. The investigation panel led by Franco Rino released its independent fact-finding report recommending among them the suspension of the county official involved in the fraud. "We recommend that the County Main treasury should be audited once every three months so as to establish a transparent financial management system," said the report. The committee submitted that job description of accounting officers should clearly be identified and stipulated to avoid a monopoly of one person acting as Director of Accounts, Controller of Accounts, Cashier and Rate Collector. "Rate or tax collectors should always remit revenue collected on daily basis and should not be allowed to host the public money at their own house or homes for period of weeks or months," said the report. They recommended that all financial forms after every work should be handed over to the Controller of accounts for custody to avoid unnecessary tax collections at wrong hours with exception of those doing collections at late hours. Those remittances which always come direct to the main chest cashier should be stopped forthwith and be channelled through a rightful channel system. The team said that the county main cashier had disappeared and did not present all the necessary support which could have been vouchers and other important receipts in his office. Additionally, the report presented to the commissioner reveals that during investigation processes, there was lack of cooperation from some of accounting staff, hence making the committee´s work difficult. "With the disappearance of the County´s Main Chest Cashier and lack of cooperation from some accounting staff, our work couldn´t continue as expected," part of report reads. The committee nevertheless, has recommended that chest cashier should be suspended pending thorough investigations and be replaced by a new cashier who should be assigned by the county authorities, preferably recommended by the State Ministry of Finance. The committee also has recommended that since the main cashier vanished from the custody of security personnel, a warrant of arrest must be issued to him. Among the findings, the committee has disclosed that during the investigation work, it found money at the office being scattered and were mixed up with papers and to make it worse, they were not found in the chest. Some notes were found to have been destroyed by white ants and rats while some of the notes were found tied in rolls and others in envelopes with their respective labels with some of the labels could clearly be identified and other completely not clear. According to the report, a total amount of 26,926 SSP was found. "We found it difficult to crosscheck treasury books due to disappearance of the cashier of the main chest from the custody of the security on top of lack of cooperation from some accounting staff," the report says. The commissioner described the work as a commendable one as he encouraged them to continue delivering impartially to the citizens without fear or favour. The County Finance Secretary did monetary collections from land applicants and the collections submitted to the county authority through the bursar but later noted wide irregularities as money went missing or disappeared silently. The team was led by Franco Rhino, with Fr. Kasiano Okito being the committee´s secretary. Other members included Philip Lokai Lopeta, Edward Terension and Asai Moses from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). Posted in: Home, Business, Governance -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
