Dear Editor,
A family owns a printer or just a small shop. One spouse does the receiving and spending of cash and the other does the accounting. This is ‘iree’ as long as they agree on what they are doing. After all it is a family business and both of them have labour in it and shares in it. They can, if they wish, spend from the business for their household and charge the expenditure as drawings for their household. They need not be under the same roof. The one active on the enterprise can take home figures to the other, or send them across to where the other is. It’s a family business. Even so, the form of business matters.
State enterprises are not family property, but belong to all citizens and should operate under different rules. We know too much about temptation nowadays. We should not place people in a position that will lead other people even to suspect that one family member can protect the faults, if any, or slips of the other. You may say there are no faults, but just as well there may be and it is better assurance for the public when they do not see this kind of positioning. Former Controller of Customs Clarence Chue came under heavy doubt and propaganda from political sections because his brother became a businessman importing goods through the Customs, with similar accommodation. as other importers. He was rendered redundant under a specially crafted provision of the Revenue Act, a provision not in the original Canadian Act which was used as a model. This is after the Courts had, rightly or not, rejected accusations against Chue.
A retired Auditor General (acting) is now Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Works. This appointment raises concerns of the “length of arm space “ between executing agencies and oversight agencies. Public servants are not generally ignorant of financial regulations and guidelines.
It was disappointing to me to learn today that the Minister of Finance has a relative, not a distant one, but his life partner, his wife, high up in the Auditor General’s Office where everything that may come under her scrutiny will somehow be under his financial management and responsibility. Of course the woman must be presumed to have integrity like any other person and of course she has a right to work. Perhaps she was even there before he became Minister of Finance.
This is not the first time we are running into such a thing. When the Integrity Commission was first established, the WPA objected and we felt, I think correctly, that it was not fair to the public to have the wife of a minister appointed as a member of the Commission. The Office of the President seems to have a free hand in deploying its friends. Dr. Frimpong, who has been one of the President’s men and a key member of his economic team that was very selective, and rushed very slowly to support the same sector, will now head a USAID agency that is responsible for supporting competitiveness in the private sector. His former principal is no doubt satisfied with the switch and it is hoped that the private sector had at least been consulted. One section of the private sector that can benefit from a policy of competitiveness is the contractors sector. It is an open secret that African construction and a few non-PPP Indian contractors as well have been neglected since the PPP’s return and the ‘return of democracy’. These enterprises must now be very low in competitiveness, compared to those pampered by the new government. If this is a racial comment it is because it is dealing with racial and political discrimination. The Procurement Act has merely made the power of the government to choose contractors one exercised under the law. The government is enjoying the argument over the Procurement Commission. The Commission even when in full operation will not matter because of the way the Act was crafted, giving all powers to the Minister. By the time matters reach it, the contract awards are history. This is a matter that requires daily attention until it is solved. Those who ignore it simply do understand our social structure.When President Jagdeo presided at the January meeting on National Competitiveness I doubt that it thought of this kind of loss of competitiveness, due to a misuse of state power.
The 1992 cabinet’s first act of reparations was to take land at Ogle from the State owned sugar industry , morally belonging to the sugar workers and cane farmers as a first choice and trade it out to party leaders with the official explanation that they had struggled and deserved the “sugar”. They did this after alleging that some departing PNC officials had scuttled the system in leaving office. With an air of victorious generosity they took no action but went on to teach new lessons of privilege and there are very fine houses there. There are reports of cases in which the Constitution has been ignored on the matter of the Consolidated Fund. There is now a report and I put it out here since it is a public matter. It is said that two former state owned banks, the Agri Bank and the Coop Bank have set up successor special agencies to collect debt, that they are collecting debt and that the revenues are not yet being kept in the Consolidated Fund. The Constitution orders that all revenues of the government be deposited in the Consolidated Fund. An exception is where by law a fund is established for such revenues, This is how the government in 1972 amended the Guyana Lotteries Act of 1963 to allow for a special account to be kept by the Accountant General. How-ever, this fund was exclusively for the payment of lottery prizes and charges relating to the lottery. Expenditure for any other purpose was not allowed by this amendment and would be irregular. The same 1972 lotteries amendment provides that if there is a deficit in the lottery operation at any time the amount should be charged on the Consolidated Fund “which is hereby charged with such payment.”.
The funds collected as outstanding debt to the banks listed above can be spent as a slush fund only if some law allows them to be spent in that way. Without such a law the revenues should go to the Consolidated Fund. The report about these new funds reached me along with suggestions that the revenues were being applied for purposes approved by the Executive, whereas the National Assembly is the financial authority. It is even morally so when it boasts of being fairly elected.
Before money from the lotteries account can be lawfully spent on anything but lottery prizes and expenses the legal advisers of government will have to point out to it the way of legality.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
