17 Dec 2008

Fiji military urged to release audit reports

2:38 pm on 17 December 2008

A Fiji academic says the interim Government must make public the Auditor General's reports which detail extensive military overspending.

An Economics Professor at the University of the South Pacific, Dr Wadan Narsey, says while some sectors such as education have been forced to trim their spending, the military has been spending tens of millions of dollars above its budget.

He says the Auditor General has documented this but the reports have not been made public denying taxpayers any chance to approve or reject this spending.

"The problem is that the Auditor General's report is supposed to go to Parliament, there is no Parliament, so he is interpreting his responsibilities very narrowly and just simply giving his report to the Minister of Finance, the interim Minister of Finance, who unfortunately happens to be the Commander himself, you know the head of the section that has overspent. So the report has ended up there and has not been released to the public."

Dr Wadan Narsey says the interim Government must make the reports public, allow the Auditor General to complete his reports, while the official himself needs to consider his responsibility less narrowly.