Wednesday, April 25, 2007

'The conferences of intellectuals' financial saga

The inside sources at African union commission revealed to this blogger that, the praiseworthy chairperson of AUC Mr . Alpha Omhar Konnary felt discontent concerning the financial handling situation at the commission. It may pressurize him to leave its position.
The audit report conducted by the world's prominent audit firm Earnest and Young uncovers the commission's financial and technical limitation.
At The conferences of intellectual from Africa &the Diaspora held in Dakar, Senegal october7-9, 2004, the commission's recklessness had been manifested. There seems deliberate mishandling financial matter at the conference.
The guiding principle to organize the Dakar conference was a decision of the head of state of the AU at the summit in Lome, Togo.
In July 2004,it was believed ,it would be useful to associate African intellectuals ,the Senegalese president Abdulaye Wade insist on the idea of preparing the conference. Since AU did not have enough contribution to hold the conference, it adopted the principle of financing the conference by subsidizing from head of states & through sponsoring. AU had pre financed 7million dollars from it general fund.
According to the audit report, roughly, 2 million dollar had been vanished without proper documentation. There had been payments with out any authorized receipt,
Selection of the bidder was not in harmony with the international standard &the commission's internal policy. The bidding was not announced with those media of higher coverage.
With out clear criterion, the South African Rapidawn outsourced the conference. However, it is unclear why the two western bidders denied outsourcing.
The overall audit report states the AU is handicapped with short of efficiency.
The audit report creates discontent among the higher officials at the commission. The Dakar incident is just the model of the entire corruption and mismanagements at AU.

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