By Binta Jaiteh
The National Audit Office (NAO) Thursday recommended that the Kanifing General Hospital should present payment vouchers for auditing.
Sering Mass Jallow, the Director of Audit disclosed to the national assembly’s Committee on Finance and Public Accounts Committee on the 2018 Financial Statement Audit Report of the hospital.
Mr. Jallow also stressed that, the payment vouchers were not submitted up to the time of finalizing the audit report.
‘’In the same instance we also noted that some of the payments made didn’t have adequate supporting documents for audit inspection. In that case as auditors, we demanded for those payments vouchers to be adequately supported with relevant documents in the future,’’ Mr. Jallowstated.
Furthermore, the hospital didn’t also withdraw 10% withholding tax from suppliers to be remitted to the Gambia Revenue Authority.
“The report of NAO recommended for the hospital to withdraw 10% withholding tax from suppliers or contractors to be remitted to GRA as required,” he remarked.
‘’Kanifing Hospital lacks depreciation policy and rate for the hospital equipment regarding years under review. As per the issue we recommended for the hospital to provide a depreciation policy, rate and also disclose it in the financial statements,’’ Jallow added.
However, the management of the hospital also failed to record or recognize motor vehicles they owned or control on the following years from 2010 to 2018. It was therefore recommended that theyshould ensure that such issue is recorded, recognized and disclosed in the financial statement.
Land and buildings were not recognized assets registered in the financial statements for the years under review. It was disabled in the financial statement that the cost of the land could not be determined because the Gambia government didn’t not construct the facility.
Auditors said the management informed them that, they did not engage the government to get the cost of the land and building. ‘’We therefore urged the hospital to engage the Health Ministry and the Ministry of Finance to establish the cost of the land and building of the hospital.’’
“Most of the assets acquired are scrapped and the store keeper said most of them were disposed. But as auditors after our inspection, we noted that there was no documentary evidence shown to confirm the disposal during the years under review,’’ Mr. Jallow stated.
In his concluding remarks Jallow said, the auditors also detected incorrect classification of assets in the general ledger used in preparing financial statements. He disclosed that a recommendation was made for the management to make sure that each transaction was correctly placed but that up to the time of the finalization of the report the matter remained unaddressed.
