People from atolls to be trained to audit councils

Minister of Cities, Local Government and Public Works Adam Shareef Umar has announced the government’s decision to train people from atolls to carry out internal edits of island councils.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, Minister Adam Shareef – Minister Adam Shareef, underscoring there are over 200 local councils, stressed that the Auditor General’s Office will be overloaded if the office were to undertake the audits of all the councils.

Therewith, he said the government was working on incepting a council audit system in a manner that is atoll-sufficient by training audit teams or units to conduct the internal audits of the councils in the respective atoll.

In this trajectory, he said the Local Government Authority (LGA) has identified people capable of auditing in atolls and provided the necessary training for them. Hence, the minimum number of auditors required to audit the council have been trained as per the minister.

He added that efforts were underway to train additional people on auditing to further raise this capacity.

Minister Adam Shareef further said discussions will be held with the Auditor General’s Office to conduct the internal audits of all atoll councils and at least 50 island councils per year.