Dear Editor,
This is a response to the Forensic Audit Report for the Guyana Water Authority Inc which was carried by your newspaper. Importantly, the Auditor did not seek an explanation from me on the various matters listed under the item ‘Chief Executive Officer’. This is a clear breach of professional and international auditing standards and procedures. Further, the Auditor intentionally excluded my detailed explanation to the Board of Directors in June 2015 since a hearing was conducted on these same matters and a decision taken by the then board and communicated to me by way of a letter dated June 17, 2015. In that letter the board stated that having reviewed my response to the various queries raised by the Internal Auditor, it was dissatisfied with the explanation provided with respect to the accident involving motor vehicle PPP 9050. The board requested that I repay the assessed valuation of the vehicle in the sum of four and a half million dollars. I agreed and repayment commenced in July 2015 and will end in June 2016.
I tendered my resignation from GWI which the board accepted by waiving the required three months’ notice and paying me all the benefits.
The question to be asked is why did the Forensic Auditor intentionally reproduce the Internal Auditor’s report to the board and did not include my responses to each of the matters.
It seems that the clear objective was to suppress information which would have miniaturized and obliterated his frivolous findings. On the matter of advances for site visits, these were all cleared by me and approved by the Director of Finance and never was any query raised. All these site visits were made in furtherance of the Hinterland Water Strategy and in keeping with the advances taken. The relevant regional officers, village councils and communities in the various regions would be able to attest to this. The contract of employment was drawn up by the relevant authorities (which I accepted) in terms of remunerations and conditions of service. In the case of the payment of the gratuity, this was based on good leadership and management provided by me. The many managerial initiatives, innovation, systems improvements and strategies implemented can easily be found in GWI’s documentation. All of these were designed to turn the utility around, having regard to the state of the company when I took over as chief executive. The then board and top management, especially the Chairman, and the Directors of Finance and Human Resources were aware of the above contributions and it can be inferred that they, by their non-objection, approved of the payment of the gratuity and programmed it in the payroll without any solicitation by me.
The initiation of an investigation against the CEO was the result of external directives to the Chairman of the Board after the May 11, 2015 elections and is meant to embarrass and witch-hunt top executives and replace them with persons affiliated to the new regime.
Finally, GWI was under good management under my tenure and for each of three years, received unqualified audit opinions from the external auditors after failing to achieve this important objective for several years.
In this regard, there is no surprise whatsoever that no financial irregularities have been unearthed by the Forensic Auditor in the multi-billion dollar utility except that spurious and speculative observations were made about the clearing of advances taken by the chief executive to further the community outreach of GWI in the hinterland.
Yours faithfully,
Shaik Baksh
