The customary anomalies in the management of public funds repeatedly pointed out in successive reports of the Auditor General on the Public Accounts of Guyana surfaced again in the recently released 2011 Report, with seeming irregularities in financial transactions involving public sector administrators and private enterprises undertaking contracts paid for by public funds.
This year’s Report of the Auditor General again makes mention of serious irregularities in the administration of payments by the Region Four Regional Administration to private security establishments providing services to premises administered by the region.
According to the Auditor General’s Report for last year the region’s payment regime to private security services was replete with irregularities including what it says were overpayments totalling $4.149 million found on three payment vouchers.
Additionally, the Auditor General’s Report says, 60 per cent of the payments made to security companies for services provided to the region were done without the required reconciliation of the region’s checkers’ records with those of the security service provider. “As a result it could not be determined whether the number of hours claimed by the security service provider to have worked by the guards was actually worked,” the report said.
And the region’s response to the Auditor’s General’s findings, according to the report, are that while payments to security services are now being made “in the following month, for the preceding month’s service after being reconciled by the region,” the region continued to comply with an “instruction from the Ministry of Local Government to pay for the full number of guards as contained in the invoice submitted by the previous security firm.” Earlier this week Stabroek Business spoke with a Region Four official who said that “there was nothing new” about this practice. He said that over “several years” Region Four and other regions have had to deal with reconciliation difficulties.
He said it is no secret that both the security services and the checkers employed by the regions have colluded to submit inaccurate information with regard to the number of hours worked by the guards.
The Auditor General’s Report also alludes to “payments being made in the current month in respect of services rendered during the said month,” a practice which the Region Four official told Stabroek Business was also commonplace. “Obviously, the security service provider needs to be pretty well-connected with the regional officials responsible for making those payments before the pay period comes to an end. Again, it is reasonable to assume that such favours come at a cost.”
In previous years, irregularities relating to overpayment to security services totalling tens of millions of dollars, including evidence of claims by security services for ‘ghost guards’ and apparent collusion between official checkers and security service officials have been uncovered. The Region Four official told Stabroek Business that people have grown used to what he says is “a routine” of questionable practices in the administration of security services to regions.
