THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In an intensive drive to settle the arrears of the Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) up to a period of 2010-11, the Cooperative Audit Department has decided to complete a whopping 1,725 audits in just one month.A meeting of the Joint Directors of Cooperative Department, held on April 12, had decided to complete the targeted audit exercise on a war-footing, simply to ward off criticism from agencies such as NABARD.Asking the officials to complete the audit in the PACS, which are the integral part of the cooperative movement in the state, can lead to total neglect of the quality and precision of auditing, it is feared.As of now, it takes around nine to 18 months to complete an audit in a society.Normally, one auditor has to conduct auditing in a couple of societies concurrently. The audit cost, salary, perks and pension contribution of the auditor, are paid by the societies. In fact, the audit conducted by the Cooperative Audit Department is the only measure to protect the interest of the investors. In the cooperative sector, with a total of `69,000 crore deposits, around `43,000 crore comes from the primary societies. In case of completing the audit in a hasty manner of just one month, from May 1 to 31, the casualty will be on the depositors’ interest, warns auditors who do not want to be named.In the meeting held at the PWD Rest House, Thiruvalla, chaired by cooperative audit director K G Raju, additional director V G Manoharan, deputy director R Lalitha Bai and assistant director S Ashok Kumar participated. They had a nsingle point brief to complete audit work on a fast-track mode, as the higher officials also knew very well that it would be an uphill task to complete the process within the prescribed time limit. The minutes of the meeting, a copy of which is with the ‘Express’, says that the audits had attracted negative remarks from various agencies such as NABARD. The meet was told that NABARD had criticised the standard of audits and the abnormally high dues in the agri sector. The meeting also asked the officials to formulate an action programme for the intensive drive and asked to avail of the services of all auditors including concurrent auditors.The Joint Directors said that the drive could be made a success but the comparatively short time earmarked for it was not at all enough. Societies have to prepare special reports in case of any discrepancies detected while filing statements. The directive was to convene the meeting of the president and secretaries of the societies by April 20 to ask them to prepare statement and books for audit. Interestingly, only eight officials have been entrusted with the duty to oversee the auditing throughout the state.Auditors, who have already been entrusted with group auditing and concurrent auditing, told ‘Express’ that the new drive might have serious repercussions. The suspicion is that if the auditing is undertaken in a hasty manner, discrepancies will go unnoticed and some auditors will become liable in future.
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