2 days Ago By Rakesh Kumar
The Ministry of Lands and Mineral Resources has developed a template for the landowning units to prepare their financial statements for audit purposes. During submissions on the review of the 2022 Audit Report on Economic Sector on Thursday (12/09), Ministry of Lands permanent secretary Raijeli Taga said they had also conducted extensive on-the-ground training on one-to-one basis with the landowning units on this. “The ministry agrees to the recommendation that was provided to us by the Auditor-General’s Office and is a matter of ensuring good governance and transparency,” Mrs Taga said.
“We have conducted extensive on-the-ground training one-to-one basis with land-owning units as recommended by the auditor’s team. “We have developed together with the auditor general’s team a templet for the use of audit financial statements (AFS) for the landowning units to work on and provided extensive ground training at awareness. “For the year 2023, the team had been in consultation with 14 landowning units with four face-to-face awareness and 10 has been through email content.
” She highlighted that it was difficult to contact the landowners during the awareness programs because of their availability during the day. “Sometimes we had to make special time appointments to enable them to be all at one place so that this training could be conducted. “This year, 2024, the team had been in consultation with 10 landowning units, and this has been through email and phone.
“This is just in relation to the information on the new template that they have been requested to fill in to provide for their trust fund accounts. “So, the way forward that we have mapped out, is to continue with this face-to-face awareness and visitation to the land-owning units or to the trustees; conduct trustees’ workshop in quarter two. “We have a budget of $8000 that has been allocated for that.
“And on the ongoing Land Use Act amendment for the removal of the submission of the annual finance statement by trustees and replace by the annual trustees’ workshop and the finance team of the ministry to monitor the adherence of lease monies to the deed of trust. “This was an outcome of the consultations with the Auditor-General’s Office and through their guidance, we were able to design the template that is currently being used.”.
