By NATION REPORTER
THE Auditor General’s Office is being disabled to sabotage the exposure of egregious pillage and plunder that has taken place in the last 18 months, Mutotwe Kafwaya has said.
So far, the Deputy Auditor General in-charge of audits Francis Mbewe and Clara Mazimba who was in-charge of Corporate Services, and who were at the level of controlling officers and signatories have been dismissed.(
And Mr Kafwaya says the Auditor General’s Office has deliberately been disabled by the dismissal of two Deputy Auditor Generals so that the office should fail to produce audit reports on time and pace way for more corruption and looting.
The dismissals come in the midst of auditing public debt and accumulated by the UPND administration and Mr Kafwaya believes that government has been taking draconian actions against the Auditor General to cover up the horrendous financial scandals and audit queries under the new dawn government.
“The UPND Government has decided to cripple the Auditor General’s Office because they do not want to be audited. They know the wrongs they have committed against Zambians and they will do everything to ensure that they cover the corruption, plunder and looting that has taken place in the last one and half years,” Mr Kafwaya said.
Mr Kafwaya has revealed that apart from the two Deputy Auditor Generals who have been fired, the UPND has targeted five more directorates which will have the directors dismissed.
He said while all the machinations were happening to hound out ethical and professional officers from the Office of the Auditor General, Dr Dick Sichembe, the substantive Auditor General was unaware as he was not being consulted about the changes that were being made at his office.
And has been revealed by sources from the Public Management Service Division (PMSD) that five directors from the Auditor General’s Office, including the director Ministerial Audit Appropriation Directorate in-charge of auditing all government financial books will soon be fired.
Others soon to be fired are the director under Specialised Audits who is in-charge of auditing all forensic transactions and the director under the Local Authority Directorate, in-charge of auditing local authorities and Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
The director at the Provincial Audit Appropriation Directorate in-charge of auditing all provinces and the director under Public Debt and Investment, in-charge of auditing all public debt accumulated by government will soon be fired.
Mr Kafwaya explained that once all the five directors were fired, the Auditor General Dr Sichembe shall be completely paralysed and that the action would lead to the disruption of the auditing currently taking place.
He stated that the deliberate crippling of the Office of the Auditor General was meant to create an environment that would perpetuate looting, plundering, corruption and more maladministration.
“We know that there has been rampant corruption, plunder and looting in the first one and half years of the UPND in government. Zambia has become more divided than at any other time in our history. The UPND knows time to audit the Patriotic Front (PF) which they have accused of corruption is gone and now they have to account for the corruption in the fertilizer procurement. The UPND government has to account for the corruption in the energy and tourism sector.”
So the only way to moderate their corruption and plunder is by firing ethical auditors and replace them with unethical cadres who shall be told what should be included in the audit reports.
The UPND government knows Dr Sichembe (Auditor General) and his team have been overly professional and cannot be pushed or ordered to commit wrongs. So Dr Sichembe and his team are victims of the UPND corruption,” Mr Kafwaya said.
Mr Kafwaya has predicted that the audit reports that shall be published after the exit of Dr Sichembe and his team shall all favour the UPND while at the same time casting aspersions on the PF, the former ruling party.
Mr Kafwaya stated that the UPND government had committed more corruption scandals than any other government in Zambia’s history and that by the time the governing party and that some reports such as the purchase of the CDF motor vehicles and the procurement of fertilizer had been expunged from the recently released audit report.
