Team Goemkarponn
Panaji: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has unearthed misappropriation of ₹11 lakh in the River Navigation Department, blaming it on the failure of the Head of Department to carry out mandatory cash book checks. The lapse, the audit notes, weakened internal controls and enabled a cashier to make fraudulent entries over a period of three years.
According to the CAG report, the department earns revenue from multiple sources, including traffic receipts, workshop fees, jetty and ramp rentals, and RTI fees. The cashier was responsible for issuing receipts, maintaining the subsidiary cash book, transferring entries to the main cash book, and depositing collections into the treasury.
An audit scrutiny conducted on October 4, 2021, covering April 2018 to September 2021, revealed multiple irregularities. In one instance, cash receipts recorded in receipt books were under-reported in the cash book by ₹3.39 lakh. Two cheques/demand drafts worth ₹1.20 lakh, received as hiring charges in May 2018, were never entered on the receipt side but were shown on the payment side months later to reduce the cash balance.
Similarly, a demand draft of ₹10,000 was omitted from the receipts and later recorded incorrectly as ₹1 lakh on the payment side, fraudulently lowering the cash balance by ₹1 lakh.
The audit also found instances of double entries for remittances, including an ₹8 lakh contingent bill drawn in October 2019, of which ₹3.21 lakh was remitted back but accounted for twice on the payment side.
In 2019-20, two remittances totalling ₹2.18 lakh were recorded as payments without any actual transfer, as verified from the Directorate of Accounts records.
The CAG concluded that the absence of the prescribed financial checks facilitated these fraudulent reductions in cash balances, leading to a total misappropriation of ₹11 lakh.
