By Kebba Secka
The National Assembly Public Enterprise Committee (PEC), on Friday October 12th, rejected the financial activities report of the National Environment Agency (NEA), and ordered for the Office of the Auditor General to conduct a special Audit to confirm the veracity of their 2015/16 reports. “As a matter of urgency, the Office of the Auditor General is hereby ordered to conduct a special audit for the Institution. The contents especially the activities report, is apparently not measured up to standard,” said Alhagie Jawara, the Chairperson of the Committee. Jawara said the expected seriousness that the institution should give to the exercise, did not reflect because the 2016 documents were signed on the 10th of October 2018. The appointed auditors were a bit short in their analyses of the report,” he said. According to Jawara, the auditors confirmed that all the transactions of the corporation were recorded in accordance with acceptable accounting procedures under the Companies Act. While reacting to the claims of the auditors, Chairperson Jawara has this to comment: “The auditor’s claim of following acceptable accounting standards and the Companies Act, is not fully reflected in the reports.” According to him, the auditors claim that tests have been carried out on the transactions for evidence to support the amounts and their disclosure, in the financial statements.
It was on the basis of the above that the committee opined not to proceed with considering the financial statements, in order to verify its quality, professionalism and transparency.
The NEA top officials were then referred to another day before which the Office of the Auditor General will have to conduct a special audit to confirm the correctness of their report.
