The latest report released by the General Auditing Commission (GAC) has indicted the former Director General of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), Tolbert Nyenswah, of double dipping as well as other financial and administrative malpractices.
GAC is the country’s supreme auditing institution responsible for auditing government’s revenue and spending. It is the independent Constitutional external auditor of Liberia, which supports legislative oversight over the management of public resources. It also serves the people of Liberia by conducting quality and timely financial, compliance and performance audits.
While the GAC is considered as the most credible public auditing institution, the former NPHIL boss has expressed serious opposition to its report against him, describing it as false and misleading.
According to the GAC report released recently, the former NPHIL boss received salaries from NPHIL and the Ministry of Health amounting to US$24,000.00 and L$624,000.00, but he has refuted the claim by the supreme audit body, claiming that allegation in the report is complete fallacy and lacks facts.
According to the report, the former NPHIL boss, prior to his appointment as Deputy Minister of Health at the Ministry of Health (MOH), was paid by both entities for three months, running from January to April of 2017.
The report indicated that the Ministry of Health paid US$10,803.13 and L$297,532.34 and NPHIL paid US$24,000.00 and L$624,000.00 in net salaries. The GAC says that the double payment should be refunded to the Government of Liberia (GOL).
Furthermore, the GAC reported that transactions for various goods and services, in the amounts of US$136,556.12 and L$15,345,949.02 from the government’s funding provided to NPHIL, were processed and paid without supporting documents.
“Management did not maintain payment vouchers along with the necessary supporting documents for several transactions in the amount of US$354,611.25 recorded in the ledgers of World Health Organization (WHO) Funds provided to NPHIL. The GAC requested the documents several times from management during the conduct of the audit but management did not provide the documents,” the report says.
The GAC also observed that the NPHIL management did not remit to the Consolidated Account, in keeping with the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act of 2009 unspent/closing cash balance of US$219,749.55 left in its bank accounts. The PFM requires that amounts not spent or committed by spending entities by the end of each fiscal year be sent to the Consolidated Fund for reallocation.
It states that NPHIL management made payment in the amount of L$162,000.00 from the Government of Liberia (GOL) funds to an employee of NPHIL for catering services instead of the caterer. Further, the management of NPHIL made payments in the amount of US$29,155.00 from World Health Organization Funds in the names of employees of NPHIL for subsequent disbursements to the service providers/beneficiaries, rather than making the payments directly to the providers or their authorized representatives, as required by the Public Financial Management Act of 2009.
“Payments for fuel/gasoline and scratch card in the amounts of US$25,255.53 and US$129,887.55 were made from UNICEF and World Health Organization funds, respectively, without evidence of distribution to the end users,” the report added.
However, in response, the former NPHIL head debunked and thrashed the entire GAC report, stating that “It is only good for the newspapers’ headlines, as he did not, at any point in time, receive any double payment of salaries.
“There are well-known and indisputable FACTs that no wrongdoing was carried out here. The Auditor General did not do a thorough work. These allegations are ploy, frivolous, sensational, and present alternative facts. These kinds of audit reports are only good for the newspapers’ headlines. PERIOD!” he stated.
He described as fallacy the report by the GAC that management did not maintain payment vouchers along with the necessary supporting documents for several transactions in the amount of US$354,611.25 recorded in the ledgers of World Health Organization (WHO) Funds provided to NPHIL.
“This is another fallacy. When working with international organizations like the UN Agencies, USAID, US-CDC, etc., work plans and budgets are approved on an annual or bi-annual basis and funds are disbursed in trenches based on the approved work plan. Aside from the initial disbursement, all other disbursements are predicated upon the successful completion of the task (as per the work plan for that quarter) and full narrative report is accompanied by a full financial liquidation of funds received. It is only after these financial reports and supporting documents have been verified and certified by the partners that you receive funding for the subsequent period,” he responded.
“If the GAC’s assertion is true, NPHIL would not have received approximate US$1.5 million from WHO alone, in several trenches of disbursements, during the period under review. Additionally, these international partners, on a routine basis, send their financial experts and auditors to check their account and books with us. That is why most of the partners insist on government agencies keeping a separate and distinct account for their funding. NPHIL’s integrity, when it comes to its financial management, attracted the interest of lots of partners to the entity,” Nyenswah explained.
“If the GAC is referring to the audit conducted when I was DG of NPHIL from January 2017 to October 2019, in which my Deputy DG for Administration and I addressed all concerns of the auditors and adduced all relevant supporting documents, then this assertion is false and misleading. However, if this assertion refers to the second audit conducted by GAC in 2020 after my Deputy for Administration and I had left the country (‘sources at GAC told me that the GAC carried away documents from NPHIL and conducted an exclusive audit at their office after I had left the country’), then I cannot address these concerns as I was not in the country by then,” he further clarified.