Samoa’s Office of the Chief Auditor has highlighted concerns over procedures and practices at the Consulate General Office in American Samoa over a four year period from 2011 until 2014.
“Permits were not pre-numbered for proper accounting of these official properties. As a better practice, the use of a pre-numbering system for permits would ease the reconciliation of permits received by the Office and permits issued against revenues collected for better transparency and accounting,” the report stated.
This formed part of the Auditors Report on government overseas missions for this period.
The report also pointed out the office of the Samoa Consulate General in American Samoa lacked a proper safe to keep cash over a four-year period.’
The consul general at the time was Mataafa Tomasi Esera and the permit system referred to is the one for US nationals from American Samoa visiting Samoa,
Samoa’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (M.F.A.T.) indicated that a pre-numbering system was set up and used by the office for the issuing of permits and there would be a follow-up.
The lack of petty cash on hand was another issue that was raised by the auditors.
The audit report also noted that the office has been broken into before and keeping any cash in a safety box in the office was unsafe.
The report recommended that all revenue collections should be properly stored in a secured strong safe to ensure safeguarding of all public funds
M.F.A.T. noted the office tried to secure a strong safe, however, with the current practice in place, the mission did not see the need to procure a strong safe as the banking was done at the end of each day and proper records were kept.
Samoa’s Consulate Office in American Samoa is on the top floor of the Methodist Building Iupeli Siliva in Fagatogo next to Samoa News in Fagatogo.
