Investigation Suggested For Kibly Dismissed employees at General Auditing Commission, who were lay out of the service since one year by than Auditor General, Robert L. Kilby for violations of the extant laws and regulations and financial irregularities at the Commission are seeking the Government of Liberia intervention through the office of the President and the House of the National Legislature to carry out a vigorous investigation on the former Auditor General at the GAS, Robert Kilby. The dismissed employees through their spokesman Sylvester K. Pewee said Wednesday, November 6, 2013 makes it exactly one year since the unqualified, incompetence, inefficient former Auditor General who was earlier denied by the Liberian Senate for fraudulent academic credential dismissed over forty employees from the General Auditing Commission (GAC) on the basis of budgetary constraints. According to him, the President in her dismissal letter to Robert Kilby through the Liberian Senate Public Account Committee asked that the Liberian Senate to concord with her in the dismissal of former AG Kilby for conflict of Interest but want to what decision has the Government of Liberia taken to investigate the alleged conflict of interest which led to his dismissal. “The former AG who said he had come with clean hands to safe guard the country’s treasury from people who had misapplied them rather became the rank leader of financial misappropriation”. He said. It is based upon this back drop, the aggrieved and concerned employees of the General Auditing Commission (ACE) have brought to the attention of the President of the Republic of Liberia and Honorable National Legislature as a reportable violations of extant laws and regulations and financial wrongdoings committed by the Auditor General, Robert L. Kilby, just within the period of three (3) months after assuming the position of Auditor General. He said that the essence of this petition is to enable the President and honorable House to determine on the basis of the dictates of Section 53.2, Executive Law of 1972, whether by the comportment exhibited by Mr. Kilby so far, he deserves to continue in office as Auditor General or otherwise. Section 53.2, Executive Law of 1972, stipulates that there is hereby established in the Executive Branch of the Government an independent agency to be known as the General Auditing Office, which shall be headed by the Auditor General, who shall be assisted by at least two Deputies. The Auditor General and the Deputies shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Auditor General shall be appointed for a term of office of fifteen years and shall not be eligible for reappointment. Salaries and allowances for personnel services are statutory provisions within the National Budget that no transfer by reduction can be made in the personnel services. For the GAC budget for 2012/2013, there was rather increment in the personnel services cost. This thus implies that the issue of budget constraint cannot hold for the almost 50 dismissed employees, because salaries and allowances for them were already appropriated by the Legislature in the GAC budget. However, the fact of the matter is that the Auditor General was involved in extra budgetary expenditure by bringing along with him as the new Auditor General 19 additional staff with huge salaries ranging from US$3,000.00 to US$5,000.00. There were no budgetary allocations made for the additional staff hired by Mr. Kilby though GAC personnel service cost increased by a little over US$37,600.00, monthly. Such action by the Auditor General violates Section 2218 of the Revenue Code of Liberia Act, which provides that no official or employee of government shall authorize or make any expenditure beyond the specific purpose set forth in any appropriation, allotment, and re-allotment or in excess of the amounts therein, and any such expenditure shall be void. It would have been prudent and lawful, if Auditor General Kilby has followed approved guidelines in seeking for extra budgetary approval from the Legislature before making the expenditure of the additional staff. Mr. Kilby indicated in his dismissal letters to the almost 50 dismissed employees that the prevailing economic situation and its accompanying budgetary constraints has forced the GAC to initiate a cost-saving of the entire operation of the Commission, but failed to realize that he hired new staff and pay them more than the previous staff at the GAC. For instance, the existing Director of Revenue Audit is being paid US$1,600.00 per month, whilst the newly hired Director of IT Audit is paid US$5,000.00 per month. The total variance between the 14 old staff salaries and 14 new staff salaries is US$243,600.00 per annual. This is unrealistic and Robert Kilby is claiming budgetary constraints at the GAC. Ref. Exhibit “F” and Schedule 1 below. Moreover, Mr. Kilby cannot justify his assertion that there are budgetary constraints, because he paid Muna Stubblefield Smith US$5,000.00 for the month of October 2012, when she started work at the GAC on October 25, 2012. This act does not only amount to payroll fraud but also runs contrary to GAC Human Resources Handbook and Civil Service Standing Orders, which require government employee to work for at least 10 days. On October 25, 2012, the Auditor General wrote a memo with a Subject “Rumors Circulating within the GAC”, in which he indicated that “the GAC needs manpower to audit the 350 plus government and government entities disbursed around the country. Your services are needed to accomplish this objective”. He further indicated in the memo that he had no intention of selectively targeting audit trainees for termination of employment with the GAC. The Auditor General action of dismissing 43 persons from the GAC could been seen as contradictory to his own statements contained in the memo. Given the fact that the Auditor General actions violates the Law and had no legal basis and coupled with the fact that the almost 50 dismissed persons had their salaries and allowances appropriated in the GAC budget for 2012/2013, the almost 50 dismissed staff should be immediately reinstated. The payroll expenditure for the newly hired staff without budgetary appropriation made in the 2012/2013 cannot stand charged to the GAC account, unless the Auditor General obtain retrospective approval of the extra budgetary cost from the Legislature. Section 8.2 of the GAC Human Resources Policy Handbook on position Elimination stipulates that: in cases where restructuring of facilities and programs or budgetary constraints result in the layoff of GAC employees, reasonable effort will be made to provide advance notice to employees. If reorganization or lack of funding results in the elimination of the position to which an employee is assigned and if suitable alternative work cannot be offered by the GAC, the employee will receive as much notice as possible, but not less than 4 weeks. The GAC may at its discretion provide severance pay to employees who have been terminated for reasons beyond their control. In return for such severance the GAC will seek a routine release of liability. As is apparent from the foregoing, none of the above provisions regarding redundancy was adhered to by the Auditor General. Notice was not given to the dismissed staff; no efforts were made to determine whether alternative positions existed for staff to be retrenched to be posted to Mr. Kilby thus exhibited absolute insensitivity in the dismissal of the almost 50 GAC staff. Her Excellency, the President of the Republic of Liberia, and the Speaker, House of Representatives and the President Pro-tempo of the Liberian Senate, the above issues are symptomatic of others observed to be happening at the GAC. Because of their impact on the efficient and effective management of the GAC, we advise that their resolution be considered as a matter of urgency. Furthermore, if Mr. Robert L. Kilby is not sanctioned by the Executive and the Lawmakers for his aberrant comportments, including dismissal and restitution of GAC funds misappropriated by him, it could send different signals to our stakeholders (i.e. the Liberian people and our international partners) that GAC is no longer the pillar of transparency and accountability and lacks integrity. Such perception would impact aid provided by Liberias development partners. We the Aggrieved Concerned Employees (redundant) of the GAC hereby affixed our signature to the above document for immediate action by the National Legislature and the President of the Republic of Liberia, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Ref. Exhibit G.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 20:07:50 +0000
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