Funds wasted; debts uncollected

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Audit Bureau details performance in report

KUWAIT CITY, Dec 19: The State Audit Bureau’s observations in its final reports commenting on the performance of government agencies for the year 2021/2022 does a balancing act between wasting public money, on the one hand, and failing to collect it, on the other hand, reports Al-Qabas daily. The reports, a copy of which has been obtained by the daily, revealed the continued piling up of old debts of some countries and government agencies and the delay in collecting them, to the tune of 3.556 million dinars until the end of fiscal 2021/2022, and the registration of 74 financial violations against several government institutions, 20 of which were referred for disciplinary trials.

The Bureau warned of the recorded inflation of debts of about 2.921 million dinars in the ministries – Oil, Electricity and Water, Finance, Communications, Works, Interior, Justice and the Customs Department. This is in addition to the continued debt owed to the government of about 76.2 million dinars, by each of the Public Authority for the Disabled, the Fire Department, the Kuwait University, the Kuwait Municipality, the Public Authority for Food and Nutrition, the Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources, the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training and Public Investment Authority. The sourced pointed out that the Kuwait Livestock Transport Company and the Public Utilities Company failed to collect debt of about 4.8 million dinars.

Negligent
The Audit Bureau announced 29 government agencies are negligent in following up on public funds, as they have continued since 2011 not to establish or activate internal audit units and to support them with qualified or competent people, in addition to the absence of supervision and follow-up, which negatively affects the protection of public funds.

The report also pointed to the continued existence of vacancies and failure to fill supervisory positions in the organizational structures in 40 government agencies, most of which are in independent agencies, government agencies and ministries, while each the Supreme Council for Planning, Civil Service Commission, ministries of Education, Health, Justice, Electricity and Water, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and the Customs violated the law by nor responding the Bureau’s correspondence.

The report pointed to the continued emergence of many weaknesses and deficiencies in some internal control systems aimed at controlling and raising the efficiency of the financial and administrative apparatus and the accuracy and integrity of data and results in 51 government agencies. The Audit Bureau indicated that the public treasury was denied revenues that could have been collected on the state’s real estate as a result of continuing to work on expired contracts and collecting the previous value

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