By Mama A. Touray
The Internal Audit Director at the Kanifing Municipal Council, Landing Colley, has told the ongoing Local Government Commission of Inquiry that there was a capacity gap in the council’s internal audit unit.
“There was a capacity gap in terms of knowledge about how audit works, and the staff therein has a capacity gap regarding auditing and how it is done,” he told the commission.
He added that at the time of assuming office, there were 5 staff in the Internal Audit Unit and that the Audit Unit was without a director for at least 2 years.
Colley informed the commission that KMC was “medium” in terms of control processes.
“There is a will from both the policy makers and the management of KMC to improve themselves, but the problem is that they have limited exposure to the legislative framework governing the councils. The understanding of the [Local Government] Finance and Audit Act was a bit low,” he said.
He also testified that he did a procurement audit looking at the procurement activities, contracts awarded, and the evaluation criteria used.
He told the commission that “there was no independent evaluation committee” at the council, though he advised the council to establish an independent evaluation committee as some of the policy makers in KMC do management work.
“When I came newly, I did what we call a procurement audit. I looked at the procurement processes, how contracts were awarded [and] the evaluation processes. When I looked at that, I found out that, when it comes to the assessment of contracts, there was no independent evaluation committee,” he explained.
Colley testified that at KMC, policy makers perform administration functions which he said makes them not best suited to do evaluation of contracts.
“For example, let’s say the job is not completed and as an auditor, if you have a query, you will go back to the same people who did the evaluation. So, there is that conflict there,” he said.
At this juncture, Colley agreed with Lead Counsel Gomez’s statement that without an independent evaluation committee, the contracts may be susceptible to fraud, nepotism, and favouritism, among other wrongs.
