RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina’s state auditor said Thursday that Elizabeth City State University poorly managed the school’s long-distance phone activity and shouldn’t have footed the $140,000 bill for thousands of calls to Senegal.
The investigation from auditor Beth Wood’s office shows that over three years the school paid for most of the calls to the African nation rather than shift the expense to federal grant money. Elizabeth City State’s African studies program had been developing textbooks and other learning materials for Senegal.
Between 2009 and 2012, 5,500 calls were made to Senegal from the school, with more than 40 percent lasting one minute or less, possibly from poor connections or wrong numbers, according to the audit. Still, the report says the large number of international calls appeared reasonable for the kind of work the program was doing, with financial help from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Elizabeth City State allocated only $2,239 in call charges to be paid by the federal program, resulting in $140,422 in state funds and other unrelated program funds being spent to pay for the remaining calls, the report said.
The audit found the school’s phone network didn’t have a device to provide detailed tracking of long-distance calls so business employees could properly determine from which programs they originated. The report recommended better procedures and billing information for phone calls and urged the university to replace the state funds spent on the textbook program with federal dollars.
In a written response from university Chancellor Charles Becton attached to the report, the school said the U.S. Agency for International Development rejected its request to spend about $100,000 of unused funds from the grant, which expired in March 2013.
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