Three federally funded American Samoan programmes could face funding restrictions after being designated high risk by the U.S.
The U.S. department of Agriculture has labelled the School Lunch programme, the Food Stamp, and the Women and Infant children programmes as high risk due to audit reports not being submitted in a timely manner.
The department's regional administrator, Allen Ng, says the three, which are worth more than 20 million U.S. dollars annually, could face not only funding restrictions but also grant reductions or even termination of grants.
Mr Ng says the major issue is the failure of the territory's administration to submit audit reports until May 2003 for the years between 1998 to 2000.
Audit reports for 2001 and 2002 were not submitted until February of 2005 and the 2003 audit report was not submitted until August of last year.
To date, no audit report has been submitted for the financial year 2004.
