[Source: Parliament of the Republic of Fiji]

Deficiencies in the operations of the office of the Auditor General have been raised in parliament as the House debates various reports.

Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum highlighted that the role of the OAG is fundamentally to help improve processes and procedures of State entities.

He revealed that the Auditor General’s Office has recently tried to table reports in the House without considering explanations from government ministries and departments.

“That’s the office of the Auditor-General playing politics or not doing the right thing. In fact, they are actually breaching the Audit Code.”

Sayed-Khaiyum also says the Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee have on occasion, questioned government policies and programmes – which they have no powers to.

“It’s not the job of the Office of the Auditor-General nor the Public Accounts Committee to decide whether that was a good policy or not. That’s the prerogative of being government.”

The government also wants to know if the Auditor General has Standard Operating Procedures in instances where there are conflicts of interest.

“Has there been declarations by the Office of the Auditor-General because we know that there are certain cases where the ministries they are auditing, the people in the Office of the Auditor General are related to certain people in those ministries or statutory organisations.”

Parliament was debating the 2018 and 2019 annual reports of the Office of the Auditor-General.