Newsroom
Auditor General Andreas Papaconstantinou told the House Finance Committee that the Audit Office will conduct sudden on-site inspections this month to evaluate how citizens experience public services.
“Our auditors, on a specific day (within November), will all leave their offices to go on-site and examine how citizens experience a particular public service,” Papaconstantinou said.
He said the inspections would “evaluate, through questionnaires, citizens’ experiences and how they perceive the quality of service at a particular state department.”
“This first inspection, which we are trying for the first time, will take place in November, and the results will be ready around January,” he said. “If the audit proves successful, we will continue it.”
Papaconstantinou also raised concern about the natural gas terminal at Vasiliko, saying “it isn’t working and a lot of money is being lost.”
“For simple things like pens, we are expected to be very consistent with tenders, but when it comes to natural gas, no one knows how costs will evolve,” he said. “We have come to accept as normal that there is a project not working and losing a lot of money.”
On the proposed Audit Council, Papaconstantinou said, “From the start, we said that both systems work — the single-person model and the Audit Council model. Both are applied worldwide.”
“Our concern is to avoid entering a lengthy process that would affect audit work and the operation of the Service,” he said. “If you want to create an Audit Council, create a genuine one, not something called an Audit Council but operating differently.”
“The most important thing is the symbolic significance of the AO’s independence,” he said, adding that “in a rule-of-law state, the AO must be fully independent, and that includes financial independence.”
Finance Committee Chair Christiana Erotokritou said the committee “wishes, expects, and aims to strengthen the Audit Office,” adding that “when citizens trust state institutions, the state as a whole is strengthened.”
AKEL MP Irene Charalambidou said, “The Auditor General said verbatim today that we have completely lost control in terms of both cost and scheduling for the natural gas terminal project.”
“No one knows where this is heading; it’s a project that no longer works and is losing millions,” she said. “Certain people must now take responsibility — both for the scandalous past contract and for how the current Minister of Energy has handled it since taking office.”
