The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has faulted the country’s judiciary over misallocation of public funds.

The blame follows findings of a 2019-2020 audit report by the Auditor General which has exposed that the Judiciary spent money without authority from Treasury.

Speaking to YFM Online, Chairperson of the Committee Shadric Namalomba said the development is a serious breach of finance management, especially for a public institution perceived to be of high integrity like the Judiciary.

Pointed out Namalomba: “The fact that the records are not being maintained, the fact that they are not complying with the regulations, yet they themselves one of their mandates is to actually enforce compliance over the law, to interpreted a law.

“And that is a serious matter that they are the custodians of law and they are failing to abide by the same, and this is a serious matter to us.”

Namalomba also decried poor record keeping which has seen the second arm government failing to reconcile important records like that of sheriffs.

“The first one was to do with misallocation, instead of using a particular vote, they spent money on this particular vote without the authority.

“The other issues were to do with the records not being maintained for stores, a reconciliation of the sheriff fees and so forth,” he said.

However, during the interface Acting High Court and Supreme Court Appeal Registrar Kondwani Banda proposed for a 3 percent provision of the total annual budget towards Judiciary aiming at improving its operations.