The National Fire Authority did not maintain proper records for fixed asset verification as of July 31, 2016.
Authority CEO Sowane Puamau made the remark to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts during the hearing of the 2021-2022 audit report for statutory authorities, independent bodies and commissions.
“The second issue that our report had, the audit was not invited to observe annual inventory physical counting and verification by the management at the end of the financial year,” Mr Puamau said.
“And the audit was unable to satisfy themselves by alternative audit procedures concerning the inventory quantities as of July 31, 2016. Furthermore, stock take reports were not made available for my review accordingly.”
He said the 2016 to 2018 reports had audit issues as the office of the Auditor General was not represented during the annual board of survey and annual inventory stock take.
“And that was the reason why they did not accept the internal stock take report as the office of the Auditor General could not designate the internal stock take and the board of survey report by the NFA.
“Our remedial action to that is that the NFA, since 2019, has invited the office of the Auditor General to be part of the NFA and conduct the annual board survey and annual stock take. The authority has improved on its record-keeping and storage by providing adequate storage provision with a document indexing.”
