Meddlesome boards given stern warning
THE DEPUTY Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Ms Amina Shaaban, has criticised the tendency by some boards of directors to make themselves part of executive organs in various companies while forgetting their supervision role.He was speaking during the opening of a meeting which brought together chairpersons and members of boards as well as executives of public organisations.
The top officials had assembled for a one day training session on how to run public companies efficiently.
"In some cases, members of the boards have been asking for benefits such as houses... and they even enter into contracts without involving the Treasury Registrar," she noted.
The deputy permanent secretary directed that the boards should ensure that they signed performance contracts with the management, in compliance with government directive.
She further ordered that all public accounts be audited by the Office of the Controller and Auditor General and explanations for ensuing issues to be given.
"The board will be accountable for poor performance by public organisations or losses," she warned, adding that the board and management of a given organisation must operate in line with efforts to foster the national industrialisation drive.
Earlier, the Acting Treasury Registrar, Dr Mafutah Bunini, said that 80 per cent of public institutions and companies had active boards of directors by last month, as the government continued forming the entities for overseeing management performance of the public entities.
Plus, he revealed that 85 per cent of the firms had chief executives in the corresponding period. Dr Bunini elaborated that after evaluation, it was established that out of 234 organisations, 181 of them had boards.
These are companies in which the government owned over 51 per cent shares.
He said his office had introduced the board evaluation tool to monitor the performance of the boards, and through it many challenges were unearthed and addressed
0 Comments:
Post a Comment