Call to improve financial systems

THE Government needs to improve financial management systems to monitor large amounts of money being allocated to the provinces, Institution of National Affairs director Paul Barker says.
Commenting on the 2019 Budget yesterday, Barker said the provinces were critical, with a lot of money being allocated under the district and provincial services improvement programmes without proper accountability.
“Majority of the people live in districts and basic roads and infrastructure are fundamental to enabling the public to have access to basic services but also to access the market and participate in the economy,” he said.
“However, when you have large amounts of money going out to the districts, there’s no point in doing that unless the money is managed and accountable.
“We’ve got problems over many years with different financial management systems in government and now they are starting to roll out the Integrated Finance Management System which is only just starting to be rolled out.”
Barker said in the districts some of the funds were controlled very much by MPs and it’s a top-down process but some of the districts were much more accountable.
Barker said they had district committees functioning their district development authorities, but a lot of them did not have public procurement and auditing mechanism were not there.
IFMS is very crucial but they have the new public procurement legislation mechanism that is being put in place.
“It is crucial that the media, civil society organisations as well as the government systems are on their toes helping to raise awareness at local level and engage people to use modern technology for enabling communities to provide feedback so that government knows that people have the right to ask questions.
“The old system of public service secrecy is something that we have to move away from.
“Hopefully, with the approval of open government partnership, there will be freedom of information and improved services,” Barker said.