Previous govt did not address issues of PAC - Radrodro

The Local Government Minister has taken steps in committing to the recommendations made by the Public Accounts Committee which relate to issues highlighted, discussed, and placed in the reports of the committee.

This was highlighted by Minister for Education, Aseri Radrodro while debating on the motion on the audit reports of the Municipal Councils.

Radrodro says this lacked support by the previous ministers of local government who continues to blame the Auditor General.

He says some of the issues regarding the performance of the Chief Executive Officers that have been recommended are key performance indicators, the submission of up-to-date financial statements, and the intention to make sure that the annual reports of the municipalities are submitted on time as part of the key performance indicators for the CEO and the staffs.

He says there have been reforms and a reorganization structure by the minister to ensure that the operations of the municipalities are up to par and up to standard so that they can perform to the coalition government’s objectives of accountability.

Meanwhile, Opposition MP, Premila Kumar claims Radrodro is lying by giving the credit to the current Minister for all the work that was done by the previous government.

She says the recommendations made by the Public Accounts Committee have been implemented considering that the annual reports are rather old.

Kumar says these recommendations are taken seriously by the municipal councils and the local government in taking genuine steps to rectify such issues.

She says large municipalities can afford to have a large amount of people to assist but for small municipalities, it becomes hard for them to have qualified people to assist.

Kumar says in that case they have introduced shared services like HR services, financial services, and project management services which can be used by smaller municipalities, and the shared services are already in the play.

She says there has been a backlog of financial statements and annual reports but now the Ministry of Local Government has set in place the monitoring system and created a data book to see the different fees for different municipalities.

The opposition member says they also monitor annual reports and financial reports by communicating with special administrators and CEOs.