Lawmakers of all stripes yesterday gave Auditor-General Su Chen-ping (
They said that the National Audit Office, by failing to effectively monitor how government agencies execute their budgetary plans, cannot avoid blame for the rampant waste of tax dollars.
"I don't understand why the audit office has grown increasingly lax in its oversight when our government has accumulated more and more debts in recent years," TSU lawmaker Huang Cheng-che (
By the end of 2000, the country had run up a debt of NT$2.6 trillion, up NT$1.1 trillion from the previous fiscal year, Su told the legislature. He warned against taking the problem lightly lest it crowd out other spending programs.
Huang said the audit office could have helped limit the debt if it had carried out its duties.
The National Audit Office, the auditing wing of the Control Yuan, is responsible for monitoring public affairs, properties, institutions and enterprises in which the state owns more than a 50-percent share.
Auditing duties and functions include supervision over the execution of all government organization budgets, approval of receipts and disbursements, and the investigation of cases concerning irregularities and abuses of power.
"To my knowledge, an earlier flood-prevention project cost the government NT$4.6 billion when NT$3 billion would have sufficed," Huang said. "As a watchdog agency, the audit office should have intervened and advised against the spending."
Su acknowledged that many public work projects were unnecessarily expensive but argued the solution lay in tighter rules to prevent and punish bid-rigging -- and the creation of an agency to handle public projects.
PFP lawmaker Cheng Mei-lan (鄭美蘭) accused the auditor-general of turning a blind eye to secret funds kept by government agencies in violation of budgetary codes.
"It is incredible that the audit office knows of the existence of secret funds, yet takes no action to correct the wrong," Cheng said, citing as example the two accounts kept by the National Security Bureau to fund intelligence operations at home and abroad.
Earlier, top government statistician Lin Chuan (
"How can the people trust the government with their tax dollars when it fails to abide by the rules," Cheng said.
Su promised to check into the legality of secret accounts but said he needed more time to consider whether to forward the case to the Control Yuan. He said the audit office was short-handed.
Su, 75 was appointed to his third six-year term in September last year.
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