Auditor General hit by staff shortage

Farirai Machivenyika
The Auditor General continues to suffer from brain drain and has 120 vacant posts out of an establishment of 381, as the highly qualified staff move into the private sector as soon as they have obtained the necessary experience and higher qualifications.

In its report on the challenges faced by the Auditor General’s office tabled in Parliament recently, the Public Accounts Committee said the staff shortages were hampering Auditor General, Mrs Mildred Chiri, from effectively carrying out her mandate. The report was presented by committee chairman Mr Brian Dube.

“The committee gathered that the audit office continues to lose experienced staff due to low salaries, leaving a lot of vacancies,” he said. “Out of an establishment of 381, the Office was operating with 120 vacant posts which were proving difficult to fill because of the unattractive salaries.

“The effect of vacant posts was reported to be putting a strain on the remaining employees and retarding the progress of the audits.”

Mr Dube said it was important that the Auditor General’s Office be resourced for it to effectively carry out its mandate.

“Most auditing offices across the region and in the world are allocated one percent of the budget,” he said. “That percentage makes your audit office professional and to be able to retain critical staff. We have a situation at the moment where our audit office is lagging behind because it becomes a training ground for professionals and auditors.

“Once they would have reached the peak, they then leave and we continue training. In my view and the committee’s view, it is important that when we do budget debates, we should urge the Minister of Finance to ensure that a sizeable budget is given.”

The committee noted that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the audit coverage for the past two years was severely affected.

“The committee learnt that the Audit Office staff was not able to visit stations outside Harare as planned and thus delayed finalisation of the audits. This greatly affected some ministries which are decentralized,” Mr Dube added.

The Committee also noted that the Auditor General’s Office was facing other challenges that included shortage of transport and computer hardware and software.