WASHINGTON — A new U.S. audit says Afghan authorities don’t know how many police they have or whether everyone getting a police salary is actually doing the job, a situation ripe for abuse and waste of international donations.
The audit released Monday by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction says the country’s police rolls and payrolls can’t be verified because of poor record keeping.
“That means you can have ghost employees, it means you can have AWOL employees, it means you can have individuals who are under multiple names collecting paychecks,” the inspector general, Herbert Richardson, told a Washington hearing. “Therein lies a very significant problem now and down the road. We need to get our hands around it.”
The Associated Press
