The Civil Service Commission CSC has suspended Tourism Ministry Permanent Secretary Aishath Suzan Haneef.
CSC said that following the submission of several complaints against the Permanent Secretary and upon the findings of the audit carried out by the commission itself, the commission took the decision to suspend Suzan to carry out the necessary administrative action.
The Commission said that she would be suspended starting from today for 30 days and with pay.
Recently rumors circulated that Financial consultant at the Ministry Wafa Mohamed Manik had resigned from her post. But in an interview with ‘The Press’ she had squashed the rumors and set the record straight by saying that she did not tender her resignation or have an intention of resigning from her post.
The Auditor General’s Office had highlighted several irregularities in the COVID-19 compliance Audit report of the Tourism Ministry. It had said that while the Ministry had spent MVR 26 million on COVID-19 related expenditures, the audit noted that 90 percent of the expenditure was spent outside of the ministry’s mandate.
It had highlighted that corruption was involved from the purchase of medical equipment to acquiring the services of a foreign doctor’s team to the construction of quarantine facilities.
The audit also accused the Ministry of forging invalid documents to hide corruption and fraud.
The COVID-19 compliance Audit of several government institutions has highlighted irregularities in their spending. This includes the Tourism Ministry, the Health Ministry as well as the National Disaster Management Authority.
The Auditor general’s Office highlighted that the Maldives National Defense Force and the Foreign Ministry had no discrepancies in their respective audits.
