By A Correspondent- Norton legislator Temba Mliswa has raised the flag over the conduct of the accountant general who since 2014 has not signed any paperwork to authorise government expenditure.

Mliswa said because of this, Zimbabwe has had a dysfunctional Government.  

Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir. Let me first of all commend the Committee on Public Accounts chaired by Hon. Biti, for a sterling job that they did in terms of highlighting a number of issues which have been outstanding for a long time.  

I think it is good that we have the Minister of Finance and Economic Development and it will certainly help him put things in order which have not been in order.  Part of his role is to take corrective measures.

The Accountant-General, does he really exist Mr. Speaker Sir, because if you look at all what is outstanding right now, it is under his purview.  We see and read about the Auditor General, but we have never read about the Accountant General.  

It is actually new for us to think that such a person exists and what is the role of the Accountant General in this regard?  One of the main roles of the Accountant General is to authorise, to issue a warrant for expenditure to every Ministry which means no Ministry can spend any money.  If they want $20 000 you must sign for that.

Mr. Speaker Sir, since 2014 there is no paper work which has been signed from him authorising that expenditure.  So, basically we have had a dysfunctional Government.  

We come to Parliament, we pass budgets and I think in a way Parliament has been lenient too in allowing the Budget to be passed without this due diligence being done.  

We must hold everybody accountable.  So, how do we then keep giving ministries money when there is no corporate governance?  We are seen wanting as Parliament. It is not the duty of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development will come with the Budget here and we pass the Budget, but I think it is important for Members of Parliament to understand the role of the Accountant General in this regard.

The Committees here must be able to give us the direction.  There are different Portfolio Committees in this august House which are responsible for ministries and they must be able to tell us no, we cannot pass this budget because of A, B, C and D.  In a situation like this, Mr. Speaker Sir, what do you do about the outstanding issues from now going back to 2014? Not only that, he has not even come to this House to seek condonation.  

While all those mistakes have been done, he has not come to this House to seek condonation so that this House allows the mistakes done and at the same time says, moving forward the processes must be followed.  So, condonation is not even brought to this august House.

Mr. Speaker Sir, the RBZ gives money to financial institutions but the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development borrows over what they are supposed to borrow which is 20%.  They have done that, they have not come here.  

This is the reason why you see so much money floating around, people changing money because these are transactions happening without the knowledge of this House.  The Treasury Bills that we are talking about were borne from these transactions.  Today you read stories and audits about command agriculture. 

Hon. Members, we cannot sweep things under the carpet.  For too long, we have been known to be sweeping things under the carpet and who suffers at the end of the day – it is the people, it is us.  The Auditor General has highlighted a number of issues and it is about time that we interrogate further and we are able to bring people to account. 

Today we are now having Ministers arrested for allegations which is a welcome move.  For a very long time, they were sitting safe and comfortable on these benches.  Today I think it was a miserable day in Cabinet when one of their own was not there and I am sure they were asking themselves where this person is. 

I hope it hit your conscience that when you are in public office, that is public money, it is not touched – especially when it is pensioner’s money. 

So I am glad that the President has now decided to emerge.  Popularly known as Ngwenya the crocodile, he had hunted the buffalo and went under water.   He has now finished eating the buffalo and he is out again.  So that is what we expected of the President,  to do exactly what he is doing so that any Minister who is close to him and who serves this country must go to the prison. 

 I am bringing this up because if Ministers were accounting, if they knew the accounting systems in the Ministry, they would not be going to jail.  At times you go to jail while you are innocent, but it is because of being complacent in not understanding what your subordinates must be doing.

Ministers today talk about the board but who does the board report to – the Minister.  So how can you be sleeping on duty?  Who does management report to – the board.  These are the corporate governance issues which they have been ignoring for a long time and now they are coming to eat them.  

So, it is important these issues that we are talking about, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development must spend time in educating these Ministers at the workshop on how they must account for this money, how they must know that if anything goes wrong, it is the Minister who is responsible.

We want to talk about the issues of the Minister of Finance and Economic Development equally coming to this House because we hardly hear of Ministers coming to this House for a supplementary budget.  We are in a situation where the money which we budgeted for is not enough, but because we budgeted for it, it must come through because that is an estimated budget.  

Failure to do that will not deliver.  Which means, Mr. Speaker Sir, all the civil servants we have are not doing anything because there is no money.  So, the question that I ask Mr. Speaker Sir is, what are civil servants doing in offices when they do not have tools for trade?

Basically, they are sitting there having coffee with heaters on.  You cannot blame them because there are no resources.  There is expenditure from the civil servants and at the same time there is no production which covers that expenditure.  You are constantly in the red.  So, Ministers must pay attention to detail or know these issues and so forth.

Mr. Speaker Sir, in this situation Hon. Biti must be commended.  I think he articulated this well, being former Minister of Finance and so forth, he was privy to these issues.  Thus the reason why even on that day, I was disappointed that Hon. Matangira would stop Hon. Biti from debating on something that he is knowledgeable about and no one takes that away from him.  

We have a situation where the Blue Book, we have a sovereign debt of $17 billion.  This is now the Blue Book from the same team, brings it to $9.6 billion.  To think that is not enough, the third Blue Book brings it to $9.4 billion. 

These are the same people.  From $17 billion, the same people are saying, it is $9. 6 billion and $9.4 billion.  Mr. Speaker Sir, I want you to understand this.  How did they reach the $17 billion, the $9.6 billion and the $9.4 billion?  If we were to continue, it would even come to $1 billion or to 1 cent.  

What I am trying to say here is there is no work being done at all.  These are figures which have a lot to do with the running of this country.  For me, it is important that we talk about the inconsistence of the figures.  When your figures are not coming in not very consistent, it has repercussions on the running of the country because you will budget high, then they come low.  To me, that needs to be looked into pertaining that.  The running of the budget in terms of the deficit of $2 billion in 2018