Now I know what does it mean by 'segregation of duty' ....

I have been auditing in the same client's place for the past 1 month. Really appreciate that the client treat us well by providing a nice conference room for our working team.

From our study of its internal control system, they are actually exercising systematic processes and procedures from operation to strategic management level in term of daily routine works and reporting mechanism.

Everything seems impressive until one day.... We find that there is water leaking from the ceiling. Immediately we reported to the Accountant as she is the one that we normally dealt with during our course of audit. The accountant is kind enough to tell us that she is not familiar with maintenance work procedure but she will inform her assistant for further action. Then her assistant came to us and inform us that maintenance stuff is actually in charged by administration department and she would report to the respective department immediately.

After few minutes, an officer from administration department visited the conference room and find that the leaking problem is too serious until the floor is all wet. He promised us that he would take an immediate action on this matter. After around an hour of waiting, a cleaner step into the room with 2 buckets to fill up the water dropping from ceiling.

The cleaner told us that the problem is very serious and can't be solved by just placing some buckets there. She would proceed to report to the maintenance department. Finally someone from the maintenance department was there..... Thank God!!! But.... he just have a simple look at the situation and told us that this building is actually still under warranty but he would report to the development department for further action. Good!! Then we waited for the development department to come with their solution this time. After about few minutes, someone from development department finally paid a visit here and all he did was just to snapshot few pictures. According to him, he would contact the contractor and request them to repair it.....

That's all for the issue.... is 'segregation of duty' really good in operation?? I really doubt about that. I somehow feel that it actually worsen the effectiveness in this issue!!!