THE Ministry of iTaukei Affairs has confirmed that the financial statements for all 14 provinces up to the year 2024 will be submitted by the end of this year.
Speaking to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the provincial council audit this week, iTaukei Affairs Board deputy chief executive Sereana Matakibau said a taskforce was set-up in 2016 to help with the clearing of backlog, which has helped complete the 2018 audit reports for all provincial councils.
“The transactions were previously done manually at the provincial councils,” Ms Matakibau said.
“The manual records were sent to the head office for data processing, and this was the cause of delay back in those years.
“Audit was delayed since 1999. With the work at head office and the task force, the audit now is complete up to 2018 for all the 14 provincial councils, and it is now underway for 2019-2022.”
She said the missing records in the previous years were one of the major challenges, however they had noticed a general improvement in the record management at the provincial councils after a job description review.
“That was one of our key challenges, the capacity down at the provincial council to deliver the work.
“With our current processes, the minimum qualification requirement has now been raised to bachelor’s degree and our recruitment is aligned to it.
“I’m not saying that all the provincial councils have bachelor’s degree, but that is the process we are putting in place to ensure that future recruitments are aligned.
“The provincial treasurers have quarterly workshops, where we conduct at the head office with access to the system where they come in to learn the new system, and we also conduct refresher trainings on them.”
