The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issues a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Firefighters Corps. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliances individually or together are significant but not pervasive.
The audit reveals that employees of the Office of Legal Counsel, Human Resources, and the Training Bureau received collections without having the substitute or auxiliary collector appointment granted by the Department of the Treasury. In addition, the daily deposit of the collected values was not carried out as provided by Regulation 25 on Collection, Deposit, Control and Accounting of Public Funds. For the audited period, $15.3 million was collected at the Firefighters Corps.
The four-finding Report notes that the property officer performed conflicting warehouse-keeper functions. This situation does not allow the Firefighters Corps to maintain adequate control of the property, which as of September 30 recorded 13,207 units acquired at a cost of $57 million. In addition, in examining a sample of the 712 property-loss events, we found that in 67% of the events the loss had not been claimed from the insurance company.
Our auditors identified that the fines imposed by the Fire Prevention Bureau are not reported to the Finance and Budget Division so that they are included in the accounts-receivable subsidiary. This situation prevents collection efforts from being carried out and deprives the Firefighters Corps of the economic resources necessary to attend to its fiscal operations.
The audit reveals that the physical inventory of materials and uniforms carried out from 2014 to 2016 was not supervised by any official unrelated to the functions of keeping the physical control of the inventory. The inventory count was carried out by two employees and the warehouse manager, which are conflicting functions. A similar situation had been commented on in Audit Report DA-08-08 of February 13, 2008.
The Report covers the period from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2017.
See Audit Report DA-19-06.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
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