Bangladesh Mahila Parishad - Norad

461) Capacity of Finance Director should be enhanced by providing training inaccounting software and financial reporting.2) Members of finance team should be assessed individually and their capacityshould be enhanced by providing necessary training in the areas of weakness.3) Salary structure of BMP should be upgraded to be able to hire and retainexperienced accountants; and4) Management of BMP should always have a succession plan so that its normaloperation is not interrupted due to turnover of employees.Internal Audit DepartmentBMP’s internal audit team comprise of one person. During our review, we havechecked some of the internal audit reports, where the auditor made comments ondifferent branch offices. Internal audit function is limited to audit of the branchoffices, although volume of transaction at branch office level is not significant (Tk.17000.00 per month per District level branch office). Internal audit reports aresubmitted to the finance sub-committee for discussion but no follow-up isdocumented in the minutes of these meetings. In most cases, internal audit focuseson voucher checking and findings are often on clerical errors.Recommendation1) Formal training should be provided to the internal auditor so that he couldenhance his capacity in performing the job more methodically and efficiently.A short course on internal audit and/or a manual/procedural guideline oninternal audit would be very useful.2) Scope of work of internal audit should be extended to Head Office also. Inthis connection, an annual work plan should be developed based on riskassessment of the field offices and different departments of the Head Office.Internal auditor would implement the audit program throughout the year.Areas more sensitive like procurement and project expenses implemented byhead office should be given priority. Also audit of process rather than thevouchers should be focused.3) Internal audit reports should be submitted at appropriate level ofmanagement and not to those involved in execution so that the reports gettheir due attention and add value to the project. Management of BMPshould regularly discuss these reports at the appropriate forum and documentin detail the actions taken and follow-up of previous findings. It would beideal to have an audit sub-committee comprising of senior members of theorganization to look in to the audit observations, recommendations and theirimplementation.