Members of LIA and, the public served by the accountancy profession, may recall that LIA is a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), and Eastern, Central, and Southern African Federation of Accountants (ECSAFA). For continued membership with these bodies, LIA has to comply with all the standards and pronouncements of both bodies.

LIA is bound by its membership with IFAC to comply with its pronouncements such as the Statements of Membership Obligations (SMOs). It should be noted that among the seven SMOs that IFAC has issued, SMO1 clearly enforces member bodies to implement the Quality Review System for members of the profession in the practice of audit. LIA by this move to Quality monitoring is in compliance with this pronouncement. Amongst other requirements of IFAC, member bodies are encouraged to set up Technical Departments and, have technical staff employed. One of the major roles of the Technical staff is the implementation and monitoring of the Quality Review Systems. LIA is confident to inform the public and its members that Technical Manager has been employed since June 2007 to carry out all the technical requirements, such as the Quality Monitoring System implementation in Lesotho for the professional accountants in practice.

Some of the notable benefits of this system are as follows:

• It will maintain and enhance the reputation of the profession with the public and the business community locally, regionally and internationally.
   
• It will put the profession in a stronger position to influence the future direction of regulatory involvement in the activities of practitioners, particularly as regards the attest function, since this will be the professional body which subjects its members to mandatory reviews.
   
• It will demonstrate to the critics that the profession is committed to self regulation and to ensuring the highest standards of professional work.
   
• Public perception of the profession will be improved as the public realizes that the profession does not only demand high standards from its practitioners, but it also monitors and enforces those standards.
   
• It will raise the standard of the accounting profession and the attest function in the country as a whole as practitioners realize that, whatever work they do, this may be subjected to quality review.
   
• Practitioner’s own internal review programmes, where these exist, may need to be reassessed as a result of the independent external reviews.

At the moment LIA is about to conclude preparations for implementation of this system. The LIA has issued the questions and answers document to members for comment before the actual takeoff of the system.