State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) Report — Part Five (2017)

·       Fifth: Local Authorities Sector

·       Municipal, Local and Joint Councils

-        The local governance sector.. a sector that, if it is sound... the central state is sound ...it is the hand that can be painful - as we have in Palestine - ...or powerful... for the body of the state..!!. Since most countries in the world rely on the development of local communities through elected councils representing citizens, whether in municipalities or local councils or joint service councils... Governments around the world attach the utmost importance to strengthening democracy and decentralization... to involve citizens in governing themselves on the levels of economic and social life affairs to raise their communities.. And in Palestine, as we see in the real reality, the Ministry of Local Government exerts great efforts to develop local governance and to advance these communities and to supervise citizens’ self-organization.. by enacting laws and following up on their implementation, establishing projects, sending many employees and members and heads of local bodies abroad for training, establishing projects and holding seminars and workshops for these bodies and their cadres. The ministry’s efforts, which is the ministry with the largest and most branched volumes of activities in this field... since it supervises many small parliaments. I noticed, and despite all these efforts, the clear existence and recurrence of observations, violations, and shortcomings in some bodies, some of which will be pointed out, although the majority of our local bodies have a problem with sound local governance...!!

-        The continued emergence of areas of weakness in advancing these local communities constitutes a real problem for the central state, as it weakens its ability to govern democratically..... Many of the violations and observations that I will list, quoted from the reports of the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB), show some of the local communities in Palestine in a state of inability to carry out transparent, accountable, and integrity-based local governance..... And the continued appearance of such observations across all administrative and financial audit reports over successive years indicates the failure of some of these bodies to assert themselves or to stand up for the interests of their citizens with responsibility and transparency... And it is clear that even the elections for councils of these bodies do not generally produce leaders qualified to steer the helm of local councils’ ship to safe harbor.

-        A spirit of familism and a lack of concern by some citizens for the property of their bodies and attempts to encroach upon it and to seize or steal from the facilities of their local bodies is a culture among them.. a culture of mischief, laxity and weak responsibility. These are burdens added to the first burden... The existence of some local bodies with these violations does not mean that all bodies are violative, but in general the situation requires a cooperative stand between the citizens.. and their local bodies and cooperation with the Ministry of Local Government, because by virtue of my having audited the accounts of some of these local bodies as an external legal auditor for these bodies, I found that the violations reported by the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) in its reports are completely correct.. and correspond to what is happening in reality, and I do not depart from the truth when I say that some of the violations of some local bodies are relatively greater...!!, and the continued deduction by Israel of amounts reaching hundreds of millions of shekels from the monthly clearing-bill funds of the Palestinian National Authority as payment for overdue bills of Palestinian local bodies, which are referred to as net borrowing in the budget.... and whose outstanding and accumulated debts, which are being deducted as we mentioned ...exceeded more than 1 billion shekels...is evidence that local governance bodies are not fulfilling their responsibilities in the fullest manner... And sometimes one can address a phrase of indifference to the councils of some of these local bodies..!!

-    In the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) financial and administrative report for 2017 submitted on 25-9-2018
The number of audit reports issued during 2017 reached approximately 70 audit reports, and 97 complaints were also followed up in more than 68 local bodies.

-        If we look at the results of the Bureau’s audits, some of the local bodies.. and in most cases the majority of them, suffer from weakness in their ability to exercise all the powers and authorities vested in them within the boundaries of the local body’s area.. and also suffer from weakness in documenting financial transactions through a sound supporting documentation cycle and the lack of necessary supporting documents to prove them, which undermines their reliability.. and there are deviations in the implementation of budgets, in addition to inaccuracy in preparing and estimating revenue and expenditure items.. Weakness in measures taken to reduce loss rates in water and electricity networks and to identify their causes and work to address them, and there are suspicions of manipulation and forgery in data and registers in order to conceal a deficiency or to exploit financial differences for personal interests. Weak capacity of local bodies to meet their obligations due to laxity in collecting fees and taxes and not taking decisive measures to collect revenues and accumulated debts from citizens.. which has increased the accumulation of indebtedness significantly, thereby increasing the debt of those bodies and their inability to pay... Some local bodies granted discounts and exemptions on due fees and some provided services contrary to the governing laws... and without legal justification. Expenditure beyond the scope of local bodies’ authority.. and without available appropriations in the budget... and lack of standards of transparency and integrity and laxity in enforcement in recruitment and promotion operations and in grants of allowances and weak oversight controls and lack of safeguards for the data of both the prepaid charging program and the accounting programs in use in local bodies.. which may expose such programs to manipulation, loss, and exploitation.. and the absence of fairness in the distribution of some projects implemented by some local bodies across the full jurisdiction of the body and existence of violations during implementation. Random construction and increases in encroachments on public roads and streets due to non-compliance with the provisions of the Building and Planning Regulations regarding the granting of licenses.. and field inspections.. Weak adherence to holding at least one ordinary session each week... and no administrative measures are taken against those who are absent... from attendance for more than 3 consecutive sessions.

-        And these results are nearly the same, if not greater, in previous Bureau reports as in the 2016 report; there is also weak internal control and therefore weakness in the preservation of local bodies’ assets and properties and weakness in financial affairs management in the majority of local bodies such as noncompliance with keeping proper accounting records and the absence of a supporting documentation cycle and the unreliability of these local bodies’ accounts, and the existence of errors in posting and recording financial transactions, weakness in procedures to control received checks and their collection and failure to account for and register all donations made to the bodies in their accounts, and misuse of funds in some local bodies and exploitation of their funds by some employees and heads of local bodies. There are suspicions of manipulation and forgery in local bodies’ data and registers, high indebtedness of many bodies and a low collection rate due to laxity in taking appropriate measures to activate collection, and violations in the implementation of tenders and projects, and violations in paying overtime allowances to employees of more than 25% of the employee’s salary, in addition to the absence of records documenting overtime hours, and there are no registers to prove employees’ attendance, absence, and departure.. and no supporting documentation cycle for local bodies’ warehouses and failure to use accounting and inventory forms in receipts and issues and even lack of insurance on warehouse materials.. and no registers for local bodies’ properties and the chain of ownership, in addition to observations regarding exploitation of the position by heads of bodies and some council members, especially in recruitment or promotion or occupying tenders.

-        In any case... this is the situation..... we have it in our small parliaments.... Therefore, they must reform the situation immediately....!

-        Date: 17-1-2019