The Office of the Auditor-General says submitting a false written response is providing false information to a public office holder.
Dineshwar Prasad, the acting Assistant Auditor-General, made the comment before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week.
Yogesh Karan, the Sugar Ministry’s permanent secretary, had told the PAC he was disappointed with the Auditor-General who didn’t hold an exit meeting with him and submitted a report to Parliament that found abuse, poor record keeping and poor monitoring of government subsidies to farmers.
“This report by the Auditor-General is quite true, quite bad for a government that is providing grants and, in some instances, people who received the funds didn’t use the funds,” said PAC chairman Esrom Immanuel.
“Maybe at that time, probably there wasn’t enough staff or maybe which particular arm of the Sugar Ministry was responsible for this – the FSC or the ministry. Can I say that we agree that this report is a true statement.”
Mr Karan said he didn’t agree with the findings.
“There is supposed to be an opening and a closing meeting – and in this case, at the time of the closing meeting, I wasn’t there,” he said.
“There was a meeting which wasn’t really a closing meeting because the permanent secretary of the ministry is accountable, then the meeting must be done with the permanent secretary.
“And to this effect I have written to the Auditor-General’s office regarding my disagreement in the manner in which the report was concluded and submitted to Parliament. It didn’t give me an opportunity to explain most of the things which are here.”
Mr Prasad said they had requested an exit meeting with the PS for Sugar on two occasions.
“In one instance the meeting was arranged and I can recall I was called by the Director Sugar at that time to postpone the meeting,” he said.
“We highlighted to the director that we needed to get this exit meeting so that the Auditor General can submit his report to Parliament.
“Unfortunately, the meeting couldn’t take place but the comments that we received from the Ministry ‘we take it as it come’ from the ministry regardless of who it is coming from.
“If those comments that were provided to us in September were not true, then unfortunately I have to say the comments that were provided at the time were probably false information to a public official.
“We have used those comments to finalise our report.
“While I can understand it was a difficult time for the Auditor-General and the PS to agree on a time to meet, the process needed to be completed – we had tried our level best to have this exit meeting done.”
