Puntland Auditor General Blames Government for Underfunding Public Finances Auditing

[Deeq A.]

Abdirizak: ”The monthly budget of the Puntland Office of the Auditor General is measly $ 40,000.”

Garowe (PP News Desk) — The state of Puntland public finances auditing was laid bare at a question and answer session at the Parliament in Garowe earlier today.

MPs asked Puntland Auditor General Abdirizaq Omar Farah to brief parliamentarians on the work of his office and obstacles auditors had to surmount to discharge their duty. “The monthly budget of the Puntland Office of the Auditor General is measly $ 40,000” said Abdirizak. Given the scale of public finances auditing tasks, the Office cannot deliver auditing services throughout the nine regions of Puntland, he added.

The Office of the Auditor General Puntland does not have a website nor does it publish annual reports on any aspect of public finances in Puntland State. Since February 2022, the Facebook page of Office of the Auditor General Puntland has been updated twice.

Underfunded and invisible, the Office of the Auditor General Puntland lacks the institutional capabilities to rein in corrupt political elites of Puntland.

Abdirizak did not clarify why it took his Office a long time to publicize the budgetary constraints that prevent his staff from auditing government departments in Garowe and other Puntland regions.

Last week, Puntland Post reported that fees generated from fishing licences granted to foreign companies by Puntland State government remain unaudited.

With Puntland executive branch controlling the legislature, the clarion call for budgetary increase for the Office of the Auditor General Puntland might fall on deaf ears.

In August Puntland State will be celebrating its twenty fourth anniversary against a backdrop of a nominal Auditor General under whose watch Puntland political elites take liberty with public coffers.

© Puntland Post, 2022

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