PAC HEADS TO ETHIOPIA TO QUERY E14M EXPENDITURE

MBABANE – Audit queries seem to be drawn to Swaziland High Commissioner Promise Msibi as once again a team from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is travelling to Ethiopia on a fact-finding mission.

The three members of the PAC travelling to Addis Ababa today are deputy chairperson of the committee, Matsanjeni North MP Phila Buthelezi, Manzini North MP Jan Sithole and Nkhaba MP Menzi Dlamini. Msibi is the Swaziland High Commissioner to Ethiopia.

The trio is travelling following an audit query where the AG noted that the statement of recurrent expenditure reflected that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation spent E14 million under item 08201, which is office buildings. The mission had allegedly said that the money would be used to purchase diplomatic staff houses, but it was used for other purposes.

According to the bank statement of the mission, it was revealed that the funds had been deposited on April 9, 2016, but to date no staff houses had been purchased.
The AG noted that the money was now being used for operational expenses of the embassy. “As a result, the money has been reduced by US$150 075 from US$913 236 to US$762 484, which was the balance as at December 31, 2016,” said the AG.  

During the first investigation he was queried on the non sale of State houses which were in Kenya, where a report tabled in Parliament alleged that Msibi had been fingered in frustrating the sale of the houses in that country. Three of the four houses have been sold after the intervention of the PAC, particularly the chairperson Thuli Dladla who personally travelled to Kenya.
In the present case, the AG said the concern was that the ministry reallocated funds from the recurrent budget to finance a capital project which was the purchase of staff houses at the Ethiopia mission.

It was alleged that the then Foreign Affairs PS requested authority from his Finance counterpart to reallocate funds from the National Insurance Provision, but clearly the objective was to reduce costs for the rentals and that the funds would be transferred to Ethiopia to purchase diplomatic staff houses. “When the funds were transferred, the mission was under the pretext to purchase office building (chancery) yet the purpose of the funds was to purchase diplomatic staff houses,” the AG said.

The AG observed that the budget for the National Insurance was not realistic because it ended up not being used for the intended purpose.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: