...say lack of resources crippling their operations
... plead for full autonomy to be more effective
LESOTHO's oversight institutions have lamented their underfunding by the state, which they say hampers their offices from efficiently executing their mandates.
According to these institutions, whose primary mandates range from reining in corruption, auditing government books, to keeping it in check and holding it accountable where necessary, their slim annual budgets could not cater for the mammoth tasks they are assigned.
This is all according to the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO), Office of the Auditor-General and the Office of the Ombudsman, who this week said their chronic lack of resources had over time led to many of their important tasks falling through the cracks.
That had chipped away at their offices' efficiency levels, they said. They further called for autonomy for their offices to empower them to act independently.
These sentiments were shared by the offices at their meeting on Tuesday morning with the National Assembly in Maseru.
The purpose of the meeting was to establish a mechanism of cooperation between these offices and the legislature, since they are all mandated to report to parliament.
The event that was sponsored by the European Union. It was attended by the Speaker of the National Assembly, Tlohang Sekhamane, Deputy Speaker Tṧepang Tṧita-Mosena, Clerk to the National Assembly Advocate Fine Maema (KC), Chair of Chairs (of parliamentary cluster portfolio committees), Mokhothu Makhalanyane.
Representing the oversight institutions were Auditor-General, 'Mathabo Makenete, Ombudsman Adv Tlotliso Polaki and the DCEO's Director for Public Education and Corruption Prevention, Litelu Ramokhoro.
In her presentation, Ms Makenete shared with the meeting how her office could not fully execute its mandate "due to the low budget (it was) allocated".
According to Ms Makenete, they could only do 20 percent of the auditing of government ministries, departments, agencies, judiciary and parastatals among others, due to her office's measly budget.
"We are below 20 percent of the whole audits that we are supposed to do. We are scratching on the surface," Ms Makenete said.
Ms Makenete asserted that her office had stagnated for the last four years, never increasing despite their request for more resources.
Her office's budget, Ms Makenete added, did not have to be controlled by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. She suggested the meagre resources allocated to oversight institutions, were a ploy to prevent them from executing their mandate proficiently.
"It could be that the poor allocation of resources to these agencies is deliberate so that the agencies do not carry out their mandates properly....," Ms Makenete suggested while insisting that they should be given the autonomy to control their budgets which must not go via their parent ministries.
"If we were fully capacitated, we would find a lot of wastage (of state resources) that is happening. I think it (underfunding) is an effort to keep these agencies underperforming.
"If we were allowed to perform to the best of our abilities, the service delivery to this country would be much improved. I can vouch for that."
She continued: "At this moment we really don't feel that it is in the right interests of the oversight agencies that their budget is determined in the ministry of finance."
If budgets of the institutions were made adequate and properly handled by the institutions themselves, Ms Makenete said, more work would be done to ensure service delivery on the ground for Basotho.
"It is so painful because even after submitting the budget, we do not get an opportunity to go and present our budget anywhere. The Ministry of Finance would then decide to give us some silly budget which has nothing to do with what we presented," she said.
She further complained that her office was subsumed under the ministry of Finance and Development Planning, strongly emphasizing that it was "improper to live under their auditee".
The Office of the Auditor-General is housed in the Finance Block at the Government Complex where several government ministries are located.
"The word independence should lead us to a point where we say the budget of the auditor general goes to a separate office other than the ministry of finance.
"This is a total disaster. How can such a critical office be subsumed under a ministry. We are not even ahead like the Ombudsman or DCEO. We are totally subsumed under the ministry of finance," she said firmly.
"If you want to ask about our plans you have to go through the minister of finance."
As for Adv Polaki, she shared how her office was "crippled and consumed within the government system", which was an impediment to them in conducting extensive investigations on certain complaints made to their office.
She said lack of autonomy stalled their work. She too believed that was a deliberate effort from the government to tame them so they could not effectively and thoroughly execute their oversight mandate.
"The Ombudsman's office is supposed to enjoy complete operational, functional, statutory independence and should be reporting directly to parliament on the work that it does," Adv Polaki said.
"However, we find that in practice it works very differently, particularly as it relates to the administration. That lack of full autonomy itself is challenging because it affects even the level of agility at which we should be delivering.
"We can't be implementing activities that we set out to do in time, primarily because we place a lot of reliance on government for funding. Whenever there is a challenge around resources, it means it stalls the work that we should be doing."
Added Adv Polaki: "Some of the investigations run quite deep and very wide. But we are not able to get into those because we are handicapped. We don't have adequate resources, and we end up shying away from those investigations that we should be doing."
She said the Office of the Ombudsman should be "restructured or reengineered" to operate entirely independently from the government, "for us to be able to deliver with the efficiency that is required".
"We are still hamstrung because we are caught up within government systems. There are a lot of complex investigations that come through the door, but we are not able to get into those because we are under resourced in terms of funding," Adv Polaki said.
"We need to be allocated adequate budgets, that can only be done by parliament. I recently returned from a conference where over 200 countries were represented by their Ombudsmen. We all cried over the same thing. We have limitations in terms of allocation of budgets.
"I don't know if it is intentional on the part of government because they know that if they give you little, you can't get to do a lot of things. Unfortunately, most of the time the interpretation is always that when you zoom into these issues and expose the rot, it reflects badly on the government of the day."
Having intently listened to Ms Makenete and Adv Polaki's submissions, Mr Sekhamane said the time had come for oversight institutions to cease working in silos but rather collaborate and work in tandem for "mutual benefit".
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The Speaker said it was the legislature's obligation to monitor the utilization of state funds allocated to the executive to ensure that they were "used in the interests of the public".
"Members of parliament give it (money) away to human souls. They say, "take this money and use it," in the best interest of our people. Sometimes the money is not used 100 percent for the welfare and comfort of our people. It is sometimes diverted elsewhere, sometimes it is outrightly embezzled, stolen. MPs and oversight bodies must therefore work together to ensure accountability by the executive...," he said.
"Parliament is the home of the Human Rights Commission, Ombudsman, Auditor General, Public Accounts Committee, Law Reforms Commission. All these are working for parliament, but they don't report together.
"Then you are told that DCEO is working very hard. I don't believe it. The DCEO was established to keep an eye on the executive so that the executive does not eat money. But DCEO is responsible to the executive."
He added: "You are hired by the minister, and you must keep an eye on the same minister? This is the worst I have heard on earth. Let DCEO report to parliament because parliament's work is to monitor the executive, because parliament doesn't have access to resources. It allocates all the resources to the executive, and it is in the best interest of parliament to ensure that the executive does not embezzle money."
"That is why the biggest attack dog of parliament should be DCEO to make sure that it takes effective steps."
The meeting was postponed before Mr Ramokhoro could make a presentation on behalf of the DCEO.
Mr Sekhamane, who said he had to attend to an emergency, directed that the meeting be scheduled for another day, as he wanted to be part of the discussions.
