Standing committee slams CSOA agency for poor performance

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The Public Accounts Standing Committee of the House of Peoples’ Representatives criticized the Charities and Societies Agency (CSOA)

on Wednesday for failing to implement the regulation and supervision of charity organizations and associations that operate in the country.

The agency has been mentioned for poor performance among 138 government institutions in the report presented to the House of Peoples’ Representative (HPR) by the Federal Office of General Auditor earlier last week.

Based on the Auditor General’s report, the Standing Committee summoned the CSOA this week to respond on the performance that it has carried out for the past two years.
Citing the Audit Report Deputy Chairman of the Standing Committee, Teshome Eshetu said the agency has failed to implement the plan it set to achieve before the budget year and was not able to supervise implementing charity organizations both in the field and at the desk based off its strategic planning.

In addition, other members of the Standing Committee also strongly criticized the Agency for not providing feedbacks to organizations after supervision and monitoring.

Members of the standing committee similarly echoed the audit report findings saying that the Agency could not take any legal action on organizations that were found to be violating regulations and directives.

Particularly, as was noted during the meeting, several organizations have been collecting funds locally from beneficiaries against the legal procedure. However, the agency was accused of not supervising and following up such moves despite its mandate powered by the proclamation.

Officials of the Agency on their part confessed saying that the weakness is because of a shortage of manpower to discharge its duty fully.

“Of course what you raised is all true. It is plain truth, that we cannot deny. However we have a serious deficiency of manpower. The more shortage of manpower the more deficiencies of implementation” Director General of the Agency, Meseret Gebremariam told MPs.

According to the Director General, most of the organizations do not operate all over the nation without violating the required rules and regulations.

“If we really implemented the proclamation fully, almost all the organizations should have been shutdown,” Meseret said.

According to Meseret, most of the operating organizations violate the 70/30 provision particularly.

“Most of them are violating the 70/30 provision. We did not try to shut them down as we prefer treating them with their mistakes eying they would come to the right directions in due time,” he said.
Source The Reporter