USAID OIG Afghanistan and Pakistan Oversight Report, April-June ...

The mission’s monitoring and documentation were inadequate. Mission staff had not made anydocumented site visits after the program’s inception. In fact, both Mercy Corp and DAI projectdirectors commented that the OIG auditors were the first USAID staff who had ever visited theproject. Further, although the program agreement officer’s representative was receivingquarterly and annual progress reports, he was neither analyzing those reports nor confirmingthe accuracy of reported data. The progress reports submitted by DAI included mathematicalerrors and other inconsistencies that could have been identified by basic checks. The financialstatus of the subawards was also not monitored. For example, Mercy Corp had spent 86percent of its program budget with more than 2 years left in the program.Involvement of the host government in planning is an important component of fosteringsustainability; however, officials in several of Afghanistan’s Directorate of Agriculture,Irrigation, and Livestock offices said that they were not asked for their input into the designand planning of projects. In addition, activities had a disproportionate number of men,demonstrating that a gender balance was not maintained as required.The program’s cash-for-work projects lacked policies on worker hours, ages, and safety.Minors were illegally performing heavy labor—including one 13-year-old who weinterviewed—and implementers confirmed that hiring minors is a common practice. Further,implementing partners did not consistently provide basic personal safety equipment to theworkers.OIG made 18 recommendations to address these problems. Management decisions have beenmade on 14 recommendations, and final action has been taken on 4.Audit of USAID/Afghanistan’s Internal Controls in the Administration of the InvoluntarySeparate Maintenance Allowance (Report No. F-306-12-003-P, June 25, 2012). Theseparate maintenance allowance is a nontaxable cost-of-living allowance that USAID mayprovide to “assist an employee to meet the additional expenses of maintaining members offamily elsewhere than at the employee’s foreign post of assignment.” 1 In 2011,USAID/Afghanistan paid more than $2 million in involuntary separate maintenance allowance(ISMA) 2 to 212 people.OIG determined that the mission had not established internal controls to help ensure that ISMAapplications complied with applicable laws and regulations and that compliance wasdocumented. Staff members responsible for reviewing and approving ISMA applicationsadmitted they did not have a defined set of internal controls to apply when reviewing ISMA1 Department of State Standardized Regulations, Section 260, “Separate Maintenance Allowance.”2 Involuntary separate maintenance allowance is used when the employee is assigned to a post where he or she isunable to bring family members.USAID OIG Afghanistan and Pakistan Oversight Report 9