The House of Peoples’ Representatives has passed a resolution that demands accountability from public offices and their managers over audit findings. The vote came about two weeks after the federal auditor general presented the 2017/18 audit, covering 174 offices that receive budget under the executive. The Public Expenditure Administration and Supervision Standing Committee brought the draft to the floor and asked for firm legal and administrative action.
Committee chairman Mohammed Yesuf told the House that the same problems show up year after year. He listed illegal procurement, failure to collect public revenue, undocumented spending, repeated refusal to fix earlier errors, and misuse of public money. He said offices had grown reluctant to correct themselves because action rarely followed. The resolution was meant to tie those findings to consequences through the attorney general’s office. After the House agreed the measure mattered, a majority endorsed it. Two members abstained.
In the same sitting, the House approved a seven-member board for the Ethiopian News Agency, nominated by the prime minister. Tazer Gebregziabher was elected chair. The other members were Hiwote Hailu, Abinet Zerfu, Tamrat Haile, Mekuriya Mekasha, Mesud Adem, and Bekele Muleta. Supreme Court president Meaza Ashenafi led them as they were sworn in. The audit resolution was the sharper item. It told budget holders that the latest findings, from abuse and unsupported expenses to weak performance, were not to be filed and forgotten.
The auditor general’s report had already named the kinds of failure the committee repeated in the chamber: budget abuse, money that could not be backed with records, spending that did not match the purpose, and offices that performed poorly. The resolution asks the executive to follow the attorney general’s directions on those findings. Passing it with only two abstentions gave the House a recorded position. The same afternoon’s swearing-in at the news agency showed the chamber doing ordinary appointments as well. The line that will matter to budget officers is the audit vote, because it tells them the 2017/18 findings are now a matter for legal and administrative follow-up, not only for a committee hearing.
Sources: The Reporter