Praneeta Prakash 
[Source: Parliament of the Republic of Fiji/Facebook]
The Ministry of Local Government’s compliance team is actively working with municipal councils to address reoccurring issues that have plagued financial reports for over a decade.
Permanent Secretary, Seema Sharma highlighted this while making submissions before the Standing Committee on Social Affairs on the Lautoka City Council’s 2015-2017 annual reports.
Sharma says they are intensifying efforts to ensure councils implement the required financial controls.
“We’re actually coming down very hard on the Councils now, for the past six or eight months, and now since we have a compliance team in place, we’re making sure we’re going down to the councils, to the level of saying, okay, these were your implementation issues, a number of them have been reoccurring issues, and they were minor procedural things that could have been done to correct it. So we’re going back to the Councils saying, these were reoccurring issues, some have been reoccurring for over a decade, what have you done to correct it, and when should it stop reflecting in your financials. “
Sharma says that councils will be held accountable for these improvements, with updates due to the Public Accounts Committee in January next year.
