Challenging the Auditor General and Other Stories

Since our fund was substantial, the Auditor General had a permanent office in our premises. Almost every week or two, we would receive an audit query. I was pleased with this because I felt safer with the oversight of another department. There were many issues that I had not been aware of and were able to remedy them.

- By SUNIL G WIJESINHA

What irked me most were some comments in the draft report of the Auditor General after my first year in office. One comment was that I had sent my car for all repairs to Associated Motorways (AMW) without obtaining quotations from other garages. My vehicle was a Nissan Bluebird, and | always sent it for service and repairs to the agent AMW. I would have been insane if I had sent it to a roadside garage, considering it was an expensive car at the time. The second was that I had purchased a transportable cellular phone, which was hardly used, and it was termed an uneconomic transaction. It was a time when cellular phones were just being introduced and were so huge that they did not fit into a pocket. The transportable telephone was placed on a side table in my office for taking and receiving calls, only if the phones in the office or the entire building were out of order. Having to get daily quotations for 7-day call money rates from 26 banks when the phones went dead, we could use this telephone instead. In fact, in one instance, before this purchase, all the phones went dead, and we lost out on getting the best rates due to connectivity issues. Only the telex worked that day. Unfortunately, since we purchased the new cellular phone, we have not had a single telephone problem. It cost Rs 80,000/-.

The third issue was the purchase of shares. Before my time, shares of Sampath Bank and Seylan Bank had been purchased. The ETF was expected to buy shares because one of its objectives was to promote economic growth through investments. These were new ventures, and anyone who has a smattering of commercial knowledge knows that a new venture takes a few years to build reserves and consolidate before declaring dividends. The Auditor General classified this as an uneconomic transaction because dividends were not received within 12 months.