THE CHALLANGES OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE
Date
2011-06-23
Authors
THAKASO, REFILOE
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Abstract
The Civil Service inefficiency in the last two to three decades prompted governments and
international development partners to put more emphasis on the reforms in an effort to
improve accountability and transparency. Despite these efforts the civil service continue
to be shrouded with practices that defy accountability and transparency and total
disregard of economic and efficient use of public resources; and therefore ineffective in
service delivery. The argument presented contends that the political and administrative
deficiencies or shortfalls inherent within government have resulted in poor financial and
administrative management of public resources. These have destroyed the professional
and social fiber of political leaders and public officials to the extent that pubic demands
are sidelined to pursue interests of certain individuals who hold positions of power. In the
process management of programmes and the financial management are inefficient
weakening accountability and transparency.
Weak accountability and transparency mechanisms have been manifested in reports of
inefficiency, corruption, waste and misuse of public resources and poor service delivery
as reflected in AG’s reports, the media and parliamentary debates. There are also gaps in
the auditing of annual accounts the Parliament and the Executive turned a blind eye on
this, indicative of lack of commitment towards accountability and transparency. The
research has revealed the following as challenges for effecting accountability and
transparency mechanisms:
Information flow on the activities of the executive from the ministries to Parliament is
inadequate, inaccurate and not submitted on time. The information system within the
ministries is weak as there is missing information and some not properly recorded
making information necessary for accountability and transparency inadequate. This was a
result of non-compliance with the financial rules and regulations and these compounded
by the fact that the work was not properly supervised and well monitored. Noncompliance
was also aggravated by the fact that the authorities gave directives for
incurring certain expenditures which were in conflict with the stipulated rules and
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regulations and therefore weakening the system of information recording. Financial
management system has loopholes which hinder information recording for transparency
to be achieved. There were also weak internal controls which went unabated resulting in
inadequate information on the use of public funds. Inherent skill deficit aggravated
inefficiency hence weak accountability and transparency.
OAG responsible for ensuring that Parliament gets information receives poor quality
information due to inaccessibility and unavailability of some information making the
information insufficient and inaccurate. This coupled with shortfalls within the office
such as lack of independence impedes the office from obtaining the quality of staff and
lacks other resources such as equipment and vehicles which are necessary for carrying
out its mandate efficiently. Audit coverage is therefore about 20% of the government
ministries and not all programmes are covered. Staff turnover due to uncompetitive
government salary compounds the problem of staff as a result there is low audit coverage
further constraining obtaining of quality information from the ministries. This results in
parliament receiving information that is not credible to make an assessment of
government performance adequately.
The legislative scrutiny continues with the deficient information that it receives, and from
the PAC hearings there has been evidence of officers not being able to give credible
account of how the resources have been expended, and unconvincing justifications were
given for financial mismanagement. This weakens the quality of analysis by the PAC and
this coupled with the skill deficit within the PAC and lack of parliamentary research
capacity hindering expert judgment aggravates the problem of legislative scrutiny and
evaluation hence the quality of feedback to the ministries.
The audit reports are also not well publicized as there are no public hearings and no press
conferences when the audit report is issued. Civil Society that plays a role in making
government accountable by questioning and scrutinising its actions was weak and lacked
the muscle to put government to task for financial mismanagement. Moreover, the media
though vibrant its coverage does not reach most parts of the country except the national
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radio station which is seen to be monolithic and biased in reporting on performance of
government.
The ministries did not attend to PAC recommendation appropriately and on time and
while the legislature is empowered to enforce compliance however, the follow-up
mechanisms were weak and it was incapable of eliciting response to PAC suggestions
from the executive. The executive did not feel compelled to respond to the PAC
recommendations hence were ignored. This rendered the legislative and oversight
structures and systems inadequate, the public financial management system weak and in
efficient and ineffective monitoring of the executive arm of government.
The conclusion derived from this is that a negative attitude of political and bureaucratic
leaders towards accountability weakens accountability and transparency. And unless
there is sufficient high level commitment to robust accountability the PAC and OAG
cannot succeed in obtaining credible information on accountability and the PAC and
Civil Society cannot hold the executive accountable as this could only be achieved if
government permits it to happen
Description
MM - P&DM
Keywords
Accountability, Transparency, Lesotho, Civil Service, Lesotho