The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly yesterday expressed its concern about the lack of supervision in the tendering process of the Region Ten Regional Democratic Council (RDC).
Regional Executive Officer for Region Ten Henry Rodney was chided for being evasive when asked about the findings of the Auditor General in the Auditor General’s Report for 2004 and 2005.
At a meeting of the PAC yesterday, Rodney said that the Regional Administration would take the admonitions of the PAC seriously and endeavour to do better.
The PAC reprimanded Rodney and his team for being evasive and providing answers that lacked specifics on queries of non-conformity with laid down procurement practices, over payment for work done, changing specifics of contracted work without due authorisation and other infractions.
The regional administration had been responding to complaints made by the Audit Office after its examination of the accounts for the years 2004 and 2005.
Among his responses were statements that loans of items and equipment to contractors and employees were being recovered and that programmes were changed, but documentation could not be found for the auditors. Rodney did acknowledge that there was overpayment on contracts, but in some cases could not account for the authorisation for those overpayments. There was also a lapse in the maintenance of logbooks by the regional administration and rental of buildings without written tenancy agreements in place.
Winston Murray of the PNCR-1G said: “The officer is being very evasive. I am very disappointed in the manner of [answers from the region].”
Murray said monitoring in the region in terms of procurement needed to be beefed up since, “this could be an avenue for leakages to occur.
“What I see here… I am not heartened. There is no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.”
Chairman of the PAC PNCR-1G member Volda Lawrence said: “There is a lack of waiver and requests for change of programmes [in procurement]. We at the PAC note that the comments lack clarity and were evasive. We are unsatisfied that you sought to give justification to the comments that the Auditor General made.”
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development Seewchan made the point that there is a lack of capacity on the part of many regions to fully monitor projects because staff constraints.
