By Ramatoulie Jawo
The Accountant General of The Gambia, Agnes Macaulay, revealed to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Public Accounts on Wednesday that her office has successfully recovered over D4.8 million in unretired imprest.
During her previous appearance before the Committee, she informed members that her office had retired D1.8 million out of a total of D8.5 million.
“We were able to recover from the staff an amount of D4,820,468.00. We also have evidence that we have fully recovered D8,913,003.50. These were retirements received from individuals with outstanding imprest. As of September 30, 2024, we have an outstanding amount of D21,726,841.80 in imprest. As part of outstanding imprest we have imprest whose cycle has not completed, which means that these were actually not outstanding. We also have an amount of D575, 000.00, which is classified as imprest that does not exist. These were raised in an error and, as such, are not to be considered as outstanding imprest. These were total amounts of D36,452,927.30,” she said.
She noted that the recoveries were collected from officials currently on the government’s payroll, with salary deductions being applied.
Kebba Lang Fofana, a committee member, emphasized that the accountant general’s department must take action and provide clarity to all parties involved.
He further mentioned that the process entails identifying the ministries, departments, and agencies responsible for execution.
Hon. Fofana underscored that if one examines the list of outstanding balances, it includes individuals who are still employed.”Because there is an individual I am seeing here who took an imprest of D500,0000 in 2018 and later became responsible for another D5 Million in 2010, and he is still working; in fact, he is a director, and if you go down the list, you will see the same individual took another imprest of D100,000. I am not going to mention the name because it will be unfair to mention one and leave the others,” he said.
He proposed that the Committee advise the Office of the Accountant General to initiate the recovery process against him.
Additionally, he requested that the Accountant General’s Office identify individuals who are deceased so that the committee can provide appropriate guidance.”Those you identify, write to them if it will be 30 days ad the notes is for all of them those that cannot be identified their names needs to publish and after the publication if they are not forthcoming, by way of updates you will update the Assembly once you update the Assembly then together we seek legal advice from the ministry of justice and then the Gambia Police the publication have to come this was our advice before and this will be our advice today,” he highlighted.
Hon. Fofana inquired further about the recovery methods employed by the Accountant General.
In response, officials from the Accountant General’s Office explained that they are recovering funds from those currently on payroll by deducting amounts directly from their salaries.
They clarified, “So the ones that we are not recovering from are not in active service, so we have not recovered from them since 2007, and they remain like that.”
The committee requested that the Accountant General reach out to individuals who have yet to settle their imprest. For those who cannot be identified, they suggested publishing their names in the newspapers.
The Accountant General assured the committee that they would proceed with identifying those on the payroll and initiate salary deductions. Furthermore, they committed to publishing the names of individuals who remain unidentifiable.