UPDATED 7pm:
The National Audit Office (NAO) has found various financial shortcomings at the Office of the Prime Minister last year, particularly relating to the use of government vehicles and their fuel consumption, to the large number of direct orders given and lack of adherence to public procurement rules.
At the same time, the NAO said that it was unable to test inventory items located at Villa Francia in Lija – the official residence of the Prime Minister – “due to reasons beyond its control”.
Focusing on an audit of three general use and two fully expensed vehicles used by the OPM, the NAO found that three logbooks were not inspected on a monthly basis by a responsible officer to monitor fuel consumption and to ensure that any irregular use of cars was duly reported.
“The logbook pertaining to one of these vehicles lacked certain important information when refuelling. Even though the words ‘petrol’ or ‘fuel’ were sometimes written down, no details as regards requisition number and amount of litres were indicated,” the NAO found.
The NAO also harshly criticised the OPM for the high number of direct orders given to certain suppliers without any call for tenders or quotations.
According to the NAO, there were instances where approval from the Finance Minister was only obtained after the service would have been procured and given.
Citing the Gvern li Jisma’ campaign in March 2014 as an example, the NAO said that the approval of a direct order of €23,222 in respect of services rendered by a particular supplier was only obtained in June – three months after the activity was held.
In this case, the OPM justified the fact that no quotations were sought “because of short time frames available and prices quoted by the selected service provider were fair and reasonable”.
Shortcomings were also found within the National Celebrations Foundation, which was established bythe OPM to organise historical anniversaries.
Noting that a lot of expenditure was not compliant with public procurement rules, it said that payments made during 2014 to three different suppliers through direct orders totalled more than €430,000.
The NAO said that it is evident that given the costs involved “a public call for tenders or quotations ought to have been published”.
No problems - government
In a statement this evening, the government insisted there are no problems in the OPM’s fuel consumption since the issue relates to procedure and not accountability.
"All fuel consumption was and is regularly updated in the electronic Fleet Management System so much so that no shortcomings were found by the NAO. These vehicles have been constantly used since 2010 and since then have been driven by the same officials."
In a statement through the Department of Information, it said the inventory of Villa Francia is a totally different matter. The Labour administration learnt that the inventory records were last updated before the current Administration took office.
In order to ascertain the veracity of the records, the Office of the Prime Minister requested an independent external audit firm to carry out an audit. This is being compared with the electronic system put in place.
Regarding the direct orders issue, these are considered as a last resort. Normal practice entails the request of three quotations from the open market when a service is being requested. In the particular case mentioned in the article, the quotation could not be obtained in view of the very tight timeframes and also in view that the OPM was "stretched" to the limit for time.
"This was not common practice prior 2013 when in various instances only one quotation was sought for services related to the organisation of annual events. This was definitely not good practice. On the other hand, the current administration has restricted such instances on a one-off basis when timeframes are truly very limited. The NAO could not have been aware of any other previous shortcomings since no audits were carried out on the OPM since 2009 and come to that in 2003."