The Auditor General’s Department says the Ministry of Education and Youth is at risk of falling victim to fraud, unauthorized withdrawals and significant bank errors.

It says this is due to the Ministry’s failure to timely prepare its bank reconciliation statements.

According to the Auditor General’s Annual Report for the 2020/2021 financial year which was published yesterday (January 11), bank reconciliation is one of the most important components of an effective system of internal control and is necessary in preventing and detecting fraud and helps to identify accounting and bank errors.

It says however, it has found that the Education and Youth Ministry has not consistently reconciled the bank accounts for teachers’ salary, general salary and deposit accounts over the period 2012/2013 to 2020/2021.

The report said for example, the Ministry reconciled these bank accounts in the financial year 2018/2019, without reconciling the previous years, which was inconsistent with good accounting practices.

As such, the department says it could not place reliance on the reported bank balances in the reconciliation statements.

The absence of monthly reconciliation would have also exposed the ministry to irregularities as demonstrated by the 30 million dollar fraud that occurred on the teacher’s salary bank account between June 2017 and August 2018. `

The Auditor General’s Department says despite requests, the Education and Youth Ministry has not provided a full list of the bank accounts it maintained for the financial year 2019/2020.

It says the ministry submitted a list of only six bank accounts and presented the related bank reconciliation statements.

The Auditor General’s Department says of note, these bank reconciliation statements were prepared, reviewed and signed-off on the same date, July 13, 2021, during the period of the audit.