Ministry of Education and its establishment poorly cared for spending effectiveness, neither kept significant rules
Press Release
June 28, 2007
The audit performed by the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) aimed at management of state budget funds earmarked for the programme, run by Ministry of Education, which was entitled “Development and reproduction of material and technical basis of the control system”.
The audited period was from 2004 to 2006, including associated data from the previous time. The audited bodies were Ministry of Education (ME), National Institute of Technical and Vocational Education (NITVE), and State Technical Library (STL). From 2004 to 2006, the investment programme mentioned above total cost reached over CZK 500 million, from which almost CZK 200 million investments were audited.
Part of the audit followed findings from the previous audit (No. 03/32 “State budget funds earmarked for the State Technical Library”). Auditors found faults with a weighty late start of the construction, which infracted the Government Decree of the National Technical Library Building scheduling the work worth CZK 1.5 billion to be finished by March 2005. The report points out that the construction of the National Technical Library (NTL), which began already in 1999, lacked conceptual skills.
„Rising costs and putting off the deadlines were main results of investment project changes. Even postponed dates of the building finalization (June 2006) were not met,” said František Dohnal, president of SAO. The construction dates were extended to 2009 and the final costs of the project increased to CZK 3.2 billion.
In 2003, ME concluded a contract of a realty purchase under the objective of a project entitled “Ministry of Education – purchase and reconstruction of a building in Karmelitská St., Prague” – prior to the project approval and before statements on project registration in the ISPROFIN system and on state budget participation were released. The additional project approval documentation contained wrong or insufficient information. Without the surveyor’s office approval, ME rebuilt one of the flats into office rooms. “In the contract, Ministry of Education accepted a purchase cost higher than CZK 27 million. The price was valued according to out-of-date expertise rules,“ said Dohnal.
In the frame of the project entitled “Ministry of Education – purchase and reproduction of information technologies in 2006”, personal computers were bought but almost a third of them were not used right up until the beginning of the audit operation.
The audit operation ended before auditors could carry out any control of financial drafts from resources earmarked for the programme entitled “Development and reproduction of material and technical basis of the control system at Ministry of Education”, in spite the programme’s realisation started already in 2003 and financial drafts launched in 2004.
The auditing operation was included in the 2006 Annual Audit Plan of SAO under No. 06/29. Rudolf Němeček, Member of the Board, controlled the auditing operation and drew up the audit report as well.
Radka Burketová
Press Speaker
Supreme Audit Office