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The project involved a contractor who was to design, supply and implement an HIV/AIDS Integrated Patient Management System at four hospitals and 16 clinics throughout the country. The contractor was supposed to do the project at a contract sum of P16,678,460 in 12 months from February 18, 2003 to February 17, 2004. But government lost P4,829 in liquidated damages per day due to the extension of the project beyond its scheduled completion date which was unauthorised, says the Auditor General. He says withholding tax of 15 percent chargeable on the management consultancy contract were not charged against the contractor resulting in government's loss of revenue amounting to P2,274,335. The report decries lack of control over the use of HIV/AIDS funds. The audit notes serious lack of funds warranted to the National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) for use in HIV/AIDS programmes. "Funds were issued to Non-Governmental Organisations, including some that did not qualify for participation in some of these programmes (in terms of guidelines issued by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning) without and subsequent check by the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit to ensure the funds had been applied strictly on HIV/AIDS- related activities." The report says that in other cases, the funds were sub-warranted through letters of authorisation by government ministries to be spent directly from the agency vote. But there are no returns to show the activities undertaken to provide some form of assurance that the purposes of the programme were achieved. For example, P29,755,647 was disbursed to one NGO between January 2001 and December 2003 and there has not been an accounting of any description to ensure that the funds had been applied on the purpose for which they were made available. The NGO got another P3,835,437 up to August 2004 though the sponsorship was supposed to end in December 2003. The Auditor General advises that there should be proper procedures and mechanisms to ensure that funds are used for the purposes for which they were disbursed in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
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