Performance Audit: Maintaining and Repairing the Arterial and Distributor Road Network in Gozo

The Auditor General, Charles Deguara, today presented to the Speaker of the House of Representatives the
National Audit Office (NAO) Rreport entitled ‘Maintaining and Repairing the Arterial and Distributor Road
Network in Gozo’. These roads span over approximately fifty kilometres and fall under the responsibility of
the Directorate for Projects and Development (DPD) within the Ministry for Gozo. In addressing this
assigned function, DPD is allocated with an annual capital financial sum averaging €1.5million, apart from
other funds intended to cover other related, yet substantial, recurrent expenses, mainly personal
emoluments. In view of this function’s infrastructural and social importance and financial materiality, NAO
carried out a performance audit to assess if the related procurement and administrative processes adopted
by the Directorate follow the principles of good governance and value for money.

The audit team’s review yielded significant concerns especially on the Directorate’s overall lack of good
governance in the scoped areas. Amongst others, the audit team noted that the procurement related files
forwarded by the Directorate featured, to different extents, missing documentation which is considered as
pivotal by this Office. From this review, NAO further concluded that DPD does not consistently ascertain
that contractual and performance safeguards are in place in managing road related projects, thereby
exposing itself to evitable and obvious risks.

This Office also observed that, while the annual financial capital allocation may not be sufficient for the
Directorate to fully address its road related responsibilities, DPD allows significant inefficiencies to prevail in
the human resource element which is assigned to this function. Specifically, NAO reports that while DPD
asserted that this staff complement was considered sufficient in terms of quantity, even if several of these
workers lacked significant skills for the job, the Department nonetheless effectively continued to
substantially increase this workforce.

During the progression of this audit exercise, NAO reports that information was reaching the audit team
inconsistently and either in a piecemeal fashion or altogether significantly and impractically late. This Office
acknowledges that the separate, albeit related, ongoing police investigations on the Directorate, may have
presented some difficulties for the audited entity. This notwithstanding, it is this Office’s considered
opinion that most of the problems and challenges faced by the audit team would not have materialised if
the audited entity was clearer in its replies and approached this audit exercise more proficiently.

These issues, along with others, are comprehensively presented in the audit report in caption together with
this Office’s recommendations.