Question NW797 to the Minister of Arts and Culture

Reply:

a) No, funds will be released to the African Institute of Arts, Culture and Heritage until the institution complies with the contractual obligations and provides fully detailed information on how the allocated funds were spent on the project, and the beneficiary further furnishes the Department with satisfactory documented proofs such as invoices and/or receipts of expenditure with additional documentation on the utilisation of funds as requested by the Department as a prerequisite to release the funds to the project. Once all the required documents and information are submitted to the Department, then the funds will be released to the AIACH.

(b) The following are the reasons for the delay in releasing the funding to the AIACH:

• The beneficiary did not submit the audited financial statements which indicates that the funds already allocated to the project have been utilised in accordance with the signed Memorandum of Agreement (MoA);

• The financial report submitted is not substantiated by proof of expenditure such as invoices, receipts, bank slips, bank statements, etc., and based on the documents submitted by AIACH, the Department is not provided with the necessary assurance that the funds transferred were used in accordance with the agreement;

• The Department further noticed that some of the items bought for the project were not part of the signed Memorandum of Agreement and even the content of the narrative report is not aligned with the financial report provided by the beneficiary; and

• The Department is not clear when and where the exhibition will take place or whether it really took place or not.