Sejong Children's Meal Support Center, Audit Finds 'Improper Accounting and Recruitment Review'

[Asia Economy (Sejong) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Sejong City Children's Meal Support Center was found to have negligence in accounting tasks and improper recruitment screening during an audit.

The Sejong City Audit Committee recently conducted an audit on the Children's Meal Management Support Center (hereafter referred to as the Meal Center) and identified a total of 12 issues, resulting in 11 administrative actions (5 corrections, 5 cautions, 1 improvement) and 1 personnel action (1 caution), the committee announced on the 18th.

First, the Meal Center was pointed out for operating a total of nine official vehicles from January 2016 to last April and purchasing fuel at regular gas stations without issuing or using fuel cards, despite the possibility of purchasing fuel through public procurement.

Public sector fuel procurement is a government policy promoted by the Public Procurement Service to integrate the purchasing power of public institutions, stimulate competition in the petroleum market, and induce price reductions, supplying fuel at prices 6.84% cheaper than those at commercial gas stations.

However, the audit committee noted that by not using public sector fuel, the Meal Center failed to save approximately 760,000 KRW out of the 12.58 million KRW spent on fuel over the past four years and four months.

The audit committee stated, "The Meal Center should use fuel cards at gas stations registered with the Public Procurement Service to save budget, except in unavoidable cases," and requested correction of the existing practice.

Additionally, the Meal Center was criticized (caution issued) for not paying training fees directly to external commissioned education institutions when spending on training for affiliated employees, instead requiring employees to pay the fees first and then submit receipts to the Meal Center for reimbursement.

The audit committee explained that this violated the Sejong City financial accounting regulations, which specify that "payments must be made to legitimate creditors."

The audit also revealed that the Meal Center did not follow relevant regulations during the employee recruitment process. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's "Children's Meal Management Support Center Guidelines" stipulate that city/provincial public officials and external committee members (appointed) must participate in document and interview screenings for hiring staff.

However, it was confirmed that from 2016 to recently, the Meal Center conducted document and interview screenings for recruitment without appointing any city officials or external committee members even once.

In particular, since 2018, the center director and team leader conducted document screenings and announced successful candidates, but on the interview day, had interviewers who were not qualified to review documents fill out document screening evaluation sheets.

Accordingly, the audit committee cautioned the Meal Center director, stating, "When hiring employees, city officials and external committee members must participate according to relevant regulations, and care must be taken to ensure the fairness of the recruitment process is not compromised."

Meanwhile, the Meal Center was established in December 2013 to support children's meal facilities with fewer than 100 children without nutritionists, such as daycare centers, kindergartens, and local children's centers. Currently, it is operated under consignment by the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Daejeon Health College, with the consignment period maintained until December next year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.