By CHARITY MOONGA –
THE Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday heard how some accounts personnel at Lukanga Water and Sewerage Company irregularly posted 26 cancelled receipts totaling K4,478 to client accounts.
The committee also heard that there were 69 other receipts with various serial numbers that were cancelled during the period under review.
Appearing before the PAC, Local Government Permanent Secretary Stanford Msichili said the receipts in question were wrongly posted but the transactions were reversed.
The receipts were issued to the customers but could not be traced back to the company as they were deleted on the main billing system of the company.
He said the matter was reported to the police and despite the workers involved being relieved of their duties, the matter was still outstanding to date.
The PAC expressed concern that to date no arrests had been made.
Mr Msichili said that it was sad that there were many cases in, which officers walked away scot free after being involved in fraudulent activities.
Earlier, the committee expressed concern at the K3, 781, 767 debt Government owed the company in 2012.
Mr Msichili said that the organisation was scrutinising the debt and management system to resolve this.
Earlier, PAC also took to task Eastern Water and Sewerage Company for purchasing a billing machine which the company did not use for more than four years because of lack of technological skill.
The company had continued to use manual delivery of bills despite acquiring an expensive new machine.