By MILDRED KATONGO –

.Zulu

THE Zambia United Local Authorities Workers Union (ZULAWU) has urged councils to operate transparently as they will now be audited by the Auditor General’s office.
ZULAWU General Secretary Kingsley Zulu said the audit programme started as a pilot project where only a few local authorities were audited, but that now it would be rolled out to all the 109 councils.
Mr Zulu said in an interview that including the councils in the Auditor General’s (AG) report should help councils operate effectively and avoid being cited.
He said the AG’s report had been having bad reports on misapplication of funds by public service workers and that it was time the councils operated transparently and avoided being cited.
“The AG is now mandated by Government to audit the councils. The programme started as a pilot project but now it will be rolled out to all councils,” Mr Zulu said.
“I urge the councils to operate transparently and effectively and avoid being cited. The AG’s report has a lot of cases where public funds are misapplied and misappropriated.”
Mr Zulu said there was need to punish all culprits cited in the AG’s report that would serve as a deterrent to would-be offenders.
He said the challenge had been that the reports were given out by the AG but nothing was being done to punish the erring officers cited in the report.
“We just read about the report in the papers but nothing is being done to punish those erring officers,” Mr Zulu said. “It has become a routine, we need to see culprits punished so that those in the habit of plundering resources are brought to book.”