State Dept. has acted on 75 percent of recommendations to improve its $4.4bn Afghan programmes
WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – John Sopko pulls no punches.
As Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), the blunt-speaking former prosecutor every month blasts off letters to the Pentagon and State Department asking why speedboats for the Afghan police sit unused in a Virginia warehouse, army barracks are a fire risk, and cargo planes are sold to an Afghan force ill-equipped to fly them.
Letters probing how the U.S. has spent $103 billion and counting in reconstructing Afghanistan have left his desk this year at the rate of at least six per month.
They are having some impact.
In a report released on Monday auditing its own work, SIGAR said the U.S. State Department has acted on 75 percent of its 111 recommendations for improvements over the past six years. Two audits have saved or redirected $103 million and four other reports have helped recover $6.6 million in programme funds.
It’s the first time since Sopko took the job two years ago that he has attempted to measure whether his office delivers results. Other reports are coming shortly on the Pentagon, which handles the bulk of U.S. reconstruction money, and on the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Almost half of SIGAR’s recommendations to State were on ways to improve Afghan governance, rule of law and anti-corruption programmes; and oversight and management of contracts was a prime sector in need of attention.
Jarret Blanc, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in a letter commenting on the findings that SIGAR has helped recover and redirect its $4.4 billion in Afghanistan assistance, “demonstrating again the value of independent oversight.”
Still, for all SIGAR’s work, that’s only 0.04 percent of State’s budget.
(Editing by Alisa Tang: alisa.tang@thomsonreuters.com)
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