LUPANE State University (LSU) experienced high staff turnover in the past two years due to the current harsh economic environment leading to an exodus of professionals from the institution.
According to the latest report for 2021, the Auditor-General recently said the high staff turnover resulted in other departments being understaffed.
“The university experienced high staff turnover resulting in the finance, internal audit function, procurement and stores departments being short-staffed. As a result, creditors and bank reconciliations were not being prepared on time contrary to the university’s procedures manual.
“In addition, this affected proper segregation of duties in the stores department that resulted in uninvestigated inventory variances of ZWL$1,99 million (2020: ZWL$240 354),” part of the report read.
On valuation of property, plant and equipment, it noted that the statement of financial position as at December 31,2021 was valued at ZWL$3 842 660 517 (2020: ZWL$1 652 626 425) arising from a revaluation exercise conducted as at August 17 the same year.
“The revaluation was conducted in United States dollars. The valuation specialist performed the asset revaluation in US$ and the value was translated at the auction rate to ZWL for financial reporting purposes.
“I have concerns over the appropriateness of using a foreign currency for the valuation and then applying a conversion rate to a US$ valuation to calculate ZWL property, plant and equipment fair values as this may not be an accurate reflection of the current market dynamics, as risks associated with currency trading do not always reflect the risks associated with property, plant and equipment trading,” the report read.
The Auditor-General noted that because of this, there is a risk of potential misstatement with respect to the proposed ZWL$ property, plant and equipment values.
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The report noted that LSU experienced a high stuff turnover resulting in the finance, internal audit function, procurement and stores departments being short stuffed. As a result creditors and bank reconciliations were not being prepared in time contrary to university procedure manual.
The report said LSU did not upgrade its Mopane management information system, which was being used for students’ databases and as a result, the system produced inconsistent data for students and results listings.
It was recommended that the university should consider engaging an IT expert to perform an evaluation of the Mopane system and rectify all anomalies.
