OAG: No policy to ensure integrity

Listen to this article:

Votualevu, Nadi, canegrower Babu Kumar at his farm. Picture: SUPPLIED

The Ministry of Sugar cannot guarantee that fraud is occurring as it has no policies and procedures in place to ensure the Sugarcane Development and Farmers Assistance Program grant is administered with integrity.

This is stated by the Auditor-General in his report on the Performance Audit on the Monitoring of Implementation of the Sugarcane Development and Farmers Assistance Program tabled in Parliament last Thursday.

The OAG stated it examined the Cane Payment Grant Manuals from 2016 to 2019 and found several anomalies.

“There are no policies and procedures in place by the ministry for ensuring the integrity of the grant administration process, such as those covering conflict of interest management and fraud,” stated the OAG.

“The absence of these fundamental policies and practices mean that the ministry cannot exclude the possibility that fraud is occurring and cannot effectively identify and manage conflicts of interest.”

The ministry informed the OAG it would incorporate the key requirements into the Sugarcane Development and Farmers Assistance Program framework in the 2021/2022 financial year.

“Fiji Sugar Corporation also has a conflict-of-interest policy and further improvements could be made to have an up-to-date conflict-of-interest register which could be perused to identify and manage possible conflicts.”

The OAG recommended all decision-making staff involved in the grant application and assessment process be required to declare their interests.

“Any conflict should be managed accordingly.”

It stated the ministry should develop and implement a probity plan for the grant program which included a requirement to create, maintain and update probity “risk registers” at appropriate times during the process.

“Such registers may include conflict-of-interest registers, gift registers and probity training registers.”

Array
(
    [post_type] => post
    [post_status] => publish
    [orderby] => date
    [order] => DESC
    [update_post_term_cache] => 
    [update_post_meta_cache] => 
    [cache_results] => 
    [category__in] => 1
    [posts_per_page] => 4
    [offset] => 0
    [no_found_rows] => 1
    [date_query] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [after] => Array
                        (
                            [year] => 2023
                            [month] => 12
                            [day] => 29
                        )

                    [inclusive] => 1
                )

        )

)

No Posts found for specific category