Auditor General's Findings
The 2023/2024 Auditor General’s Annual Report (subsections 3.2.86–3.2.90) found, from the audit of TAJ’s 2022/2023 Appropriation Accounts, a generally satisfactory state of affairs; however, the controls TAJ implemented over the preparation of salaries were still not effective in preventing overpayments.
For FY2022/23, TAJ overpaid salaries totalling $15.077 million to 520 employees, in addition to the prior year’s overpayment balances of $717,000 to 74 employees; at the time of reporting TAJ had recovered most of the overpayments, leaving a balance of $17,555.
Contributing factors included tardiness by Human Resource Management in communicating salary adjustments to the payroll unit and payment of full motor vehicle upkeep to officers whose motor vehicle documents had expired (3.2.87).
The report also found that TAJ was not consistently reconciling bank accounts on a timely basis, taking between 75 and 219 days in some instances, contrary to the GoJ requirement for monthly reconciliation. Five bank reconciliation statements for March 2023 showed erroneous credits and debits totalling approximately $696.6 million and $52.5 million, respectively (a total of $749.1 million), and the reconciliation statements for three bank accounts had unreconciled balances totalling $14.5 billion (3.2.89).
The untimely reconciliation heightens the risk of late or non-detection of irregularities and of inaccurate tax status information; TAJ advised the delay was due to high staff turnover in the bank reconciliation unit (3.2.90).
Permanent Secretary (current): Darlene Morrison
Breach Category: Resource Management
Permanent Secretary (at breach): Darlene Morrison
Breach Type: Untimely Preparation of Bank Reconciliation
