Auditor-General's report

The 2005 Auditor-General's report revealed massive abuse of fiduciary authority by the civil service officials. Items were purchased at up to ten times the market price. This is a blatant waste of the tax payers' money.

Why is there such a widespread abuse of the public funds. First, we must examine the culture and mentality of the civil service. Allocations are given to each department for development and maintenance. For maintenance funds, normally no specific projects are mentioned. The warrant-holder is free to spend the money as he deems fit. By a strange twist of thinking, maintenance allocations, which are non-revotable, are thought to be wasted if not utilized by the end of the year. Hence, there will be a big rush to spend this money comes Christmas. No emphasize is place on the quality of the expenditures. All is fine as long as treasury rules are followed.

Development funds could be abused too. Even though these funds are given for specific projects, many sundry expenditures could be hiden under the projects.

The politicians always lament that the allocations given are not fully utilized. The department heads will be pressuring the officers to finish the funds. At one time, one head of department told his officers that their performance appraisal would be based on the percentage of utilization of the allocations. Again, nobody bothered about the quality of the spending.

Given the wide power the government officers possess, for the more greedy ones, a stretch of their authority could result in further abuse of the public funds. As a result, we have the cases highlighted in the AG's report.