Cooperative unions and crop boards will from now on undergo thorough audit, in a move aimed at cleansing the institutions, some of which are said to have been deeply infested with mismanagement, embezzlement and outright theft.
Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives’ Minister, Eng. Christopher Chiza
The Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Engineer Christopher Chiza, said the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) would soon start annual audits of the Cooperative Unions and Crop Boards that are implicated to have swindled billions of money.
In an exclusive interview with the ‘Daily News’ on Tuesday, Engineer Chiza said the intervention of CAG was crucial after disclosure of massive financial mismanagement in most unions and crop boards.
“We have come to discover that there are massive thefts of public funds and suspects also include commercial banks.The CAG has already started the job some ten days ago with the Cotton Board, Tobacco Board and Tea Board,” he said.
He said the Cooperative Audit and Supervision Corporation (COASCO) was still there but the government doesn’t trust it any more to continue conducting audits independently. Apart from coming with a new Act to oversee cooperatives, the minister also said the government will review functions of the Crop Boards whose operations were of late doubtful.
He said there were views that with strong cooperative Unions, functions of many of the crop Boards would be redundant due to duplication of work and misuse of funds.
The intervention of CAG in the Cooperative Unions and other organs will go hand in hand with investigations by other organs like the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), which will automatically take part in the investigations. He said some of the sensitive areas for investigations in suspect organs include procurement and tendering systems.
Engineer Chiza said COASCO was controversial on how it conducts its audits, giving an example of failure to explain a loss of 16bn/- swindled in the cooperative unions.
By PIUS RUGONZIBWA, Tanzania Daily News
