Billions of francs were lost in wasteful and unjustified expenditures by government entities, as well as through fraud, among others, according to the latest Auditor-General’s report. The 2012/13 AG report presented to Parliament on Monday indicates that the taxpayers lost colossal sums of money because some public servants are either incompetent or are not diligently doing the oversight role in the government agencies they head. This is unacceptable and the concerned officials should be reprimanded. The officials concerned should take responsibility for doing a disservice to the nation and step aside to create room for people who can serve the country better. They should also be made to pay the lost monies if they are found culpable. If the country can lose Rwf1b in wasteful expenditure, with some 22 government entities spending Rwf2b in disregard to the law, how will we achieve our development objectives in Vision 2020? It is especially disheartening to learn that wasteful expenditure is going up. Public entities are spending millions of francs to procure facilities they are not going to use; others fail to bill clients, or pay fines needlessly, causing huge losses to the taxpayer. To make matters worse, fraud cases are also increasing with no indication that the culprits are punished. This state of affairs should not be allowed to continue; it’s hemorrhaging the economy, and stifles service delivery. However, despite all this, let’s applaud entities that had clean audits, with AG reporting the performance to have risen to 32 per cent compared to 28 per cent during previous reporting period.
