This year, the country recorded over Nu 1.4B unresolved financial irregularities, more than a double from 2018, when the country reported over Nu 600M of unresolved irregularities.
While the increasing irregularities have been attributed to inefficient public service delivery by the agencies, people have also questioned the effectiveness of auditing in the country, especially the role of Royal Audit Authority (RAA) who carries out audits in the country and publishes the Annual Audit Report every year.
A lawyer, through an opinion piece published recently in Kuensel, pointed out that the increasing irregularities and unresolved issues pending for years is a strong indication that the mere publication of audit observations had not promoted accountability, transparency, integrity, and value for money in public operations.
However, the Royal Audit Authority said they could not expand their authority beyond a certain level and the only tools with RAA as of now are to withhold audit clearances.
In 2018, the RAA rejected 7300 Audit clearance; most were rejected because of unresolved audit memos on the person’s name.
Speaking to BBS, Deputy Auditor General of RAA, Chimi Dorji, said that despite fixing accountability and taking action through the audit clearance system, as long as auditing agencies and the government do not take any action, unresolved irregularities would continue to increase.
“As per the law, any auditing agencies having audit observations, the head of the agencies have to take legal action within 12 months. And if the head of the agency does not take legal action, all the accountability will fall on the head of the agency. We have been advocating that,” he added.
One of the main challenges that RAA is confronted with while auditing is also the lack of proper documentation from the agencies. This RAA says is what contributes to unresolved irregularities.
“When there is no documentation, they explain verbally. But it is very difficult as an auditor to accept verbal explanation when they fail to produce the documentation. Poor documentation is one of the main reasons nationwide,” said Chimi Dorji.
As per the Public Accounts Committee’s review report, between 2010 to 2017, the country recorded over Nu 833M unresolved irregularities. Out of this, Nu 511.737M is currently under litigation while over Nu 321M is unresolved due to lack of action from the agencies.
The Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee, Choida Jamtsho, said that most cases are under litigation in the court and while some have even announced the verdict there are few unresolved cases in which they have not been able to find the persons involved. “That is why recently, as per the directives from the Speaker of the National Assembly, I went to the Chief Justice of Bhutan and told him that because of so many cases in the court, both Public Accounts committee and Royal Audit Authority is unable to resolve irregularities. Even cases from 7 to 8 years are in still the court.”
As per the Annual Audit Report 2019, audit issues amounting to almost Nu 45M were taken for arbitration during the year. While eight audit issues have remained unresolved even after the issue of verdicts by the court, two cases have been forwarded to ACC.
Samten Dolkar
