Around $26M worth of unserviceable and expired items are sitting in the bonds of the Guyana Elections Commission awaiting a decision on disposal, according to the 2011 report of the Office of the Auditor General.
In its consideration of prior year matters for GECOM, the report said that the Commission continued to be in breach of stores regulations leading to discrepancies which were reported in previous years.
The report said that both GECOM’s stores in Kingston and its Stores Bond at Coldingen had quantities of unserviceable and expired items that were to be assessed and valued prior to disposal. Further, items at Kingston were not properly stored to facilitate easy verification.
It said that the facility at Coldingen was “cluttered with items that had become obsolete”. It said that these included:
*878 print cartridges and toners valued at $3.55M;
*water soaked, expired and acid leaking or corroded `D’ and similar-sized batteries to the value of $528,525;
*two 13-plate dry cell batteries, 43 17-plate and 86 29-plate batteries worth $3.758M which had been certified as unusable;
*2,024 tins of expired air freshener and 1,086 tins of Baygon valued $1.063M and $933,960 respectively;
*669-model Polaroid film with an estimated value of $16.1M
The report said that the Commission’s response was that GECOM had written to the Chairman of the Valuation Department of the Ministry of Finance on July 13, 2011 seeking guidance on the valuing and assessing of the unserviceable items before a recommendation is made to the Ministry of Finance on writing off and disposing of the goods. At the time of the compilation of the report, the Commission said that it was still awaiting a response from the ministry to its letters dated 13 July 2011 and August 16, 2012. In addition, it said that it had completed a 100% physical verification of its bonds. Reconciliation between bin cards and stock is expected to be completed by year end.
The Auditor General’s report also noted an unresolved matter related to Polaroid film with an estimated market value of $30.4M. It had been due to expire in April, 2007 and the Commission entered into an agreement with a local firm for it to use the film with the understanding that the stock would be replaced. In September, 2007 $10.6M worth of the stock was declared spoilt by the firm and returned to the commission. On March 6, 2010, the report said that the Commission received goods from the firm to the value of $4.9M leaving a balance of $14.8M. The Commission said it intends to pursue legal action against the local firm.
