Government would not say if it has plans to retain the services of Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Khurshid Sattaur but that this would be decided by the forensic audits that are being conducted and various agencies when treating with senior officers.
Minister of State Joseph Harmon was yesterday asked specifically if the government has confidence in Sattaur and if it would retain his services.
“This administration will not preempt what is likely to come out in the audit. If at the end of it the audit points us in a certain direction then certainly that is the direction which we will go but I will not preempt any finding,” Harmon said.
He noted that the administration has only been in power two months and “we have to be very careful how we are dealing with certain things.” He said the GRA is the major revenue earning agency in this country and as such government will not “treat lightly with the structure or administration of such an entity until you are very sure about what you want to do.
“I will not disclose a preference for anyone or any particular officer but what I can say to you is that once we are satisfied that there is a lack of competence, that the integrity is gone, that there is corruption and that there is no confidence then I think putting all of it together we will make a decision on these matters. But I am not going to say to you that we have no confidence in Sattaur… at the appropriate time when that decision needs to be made it will be and we will make it known to the public,” the minister stated.
Sattaur earlier this week requested three weeks’ annual leave to attend to urgent personal matters, while Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has instructed that some 20 senior officers at GRA who combined have over 600 days of vacation proceed on leave to “re-charge their batteries.”
Harmon yesterday said government has found a lot of “particularly senior officers” in the public service who have hundreds of days of leave accumulated.
“It seems to us that the records kept by these ministries … people are enjoying leave but it is not being recorded,” he said.
He said government’s position is that people must enjoy their leave in the year that it is due. “The only time you can find people who don’t want to go on leave at all is because they want to sit down on something,” he said stressing that from 2015 going forward leave has to be taken within the leave year. “If you don’t use it you gon lose it,” he added.
