Time to audit watchdog after fiasco?

In contrast to the Audit Commission's past work, its critical report on the Chinese University of Hong Kong has raised many an eyebrow rather than another round of applause.

The commission is required to report to the legislature three times a year and the moment is highly anticipated by the media as the body has demonstrated an ability to pin down departments found to be wasteful.

This time, the report roundly condemned the CUHK for matters like its campus restaurants selling food to outsiders and not having a food business license, the only bookstore displaying and selling some small gadgets and the university not incorporating national security terms in contracts with service providers.

Could director of audit Nelson Lam Chi-yuen come up with more meaningful uses for his highly paid staff to work on?

How were all these things - from campus restaurants failing to sell food to students and university staff exclusively, and the bookstore making available games, toy cars and personal-care products - relate to us all as taxpayers?

Making matters worse was a subsequent clarification by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department that university canteens serving students and staff are not considered food businesses and therefore do not require a food business license to operate.

Such irony only serves to place the commission in a poor light.

Even if the findings were true, things like these - caterers selling food to outsiders and a bookstore selling small items in addition to books - were just so trivial that they did not justify the commission devoting so much of its resources to the case.

Could Lam, who came to head the commission in July last year, provide a breakdown of the cost - including the number of manpower hours - that the commission used in investigating this particular much-ado-about-nothing case?

Be fair to taxpayers who have an extraordinarily high expectation for the commission since it is the only watchdog of authority tasked with scrutinizing government spending to make sure every department uses its budget smartly with a view to keeping waste to the absolute minimum.

I doubt if I am the only person holding this opinion. Lawmaker Doreen Kong Yuk-foon expressed a similar view as she commented on the commission report.

She said the commission had gone too far and was detached from reality, questioning whether caterers of good quality would still be interested in serving the campus if they were to be barred from serving customers other than students and staff.

The primary role of the Audit Commission is to make sure public resources are being used properly and effectively.

Now that the government's fiscal position is so tight, it is all the more important for the commission to focus its work on department spending and public works that have broader implications on government finances.

As the commission audits, should it be also scrutinized by an independent auditor?