Poor preparation by officials of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs on Monday saw the deferral of a scheduled hearing before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for the second time in the space of a month.
The PAC members had little patience as the ministry’s Permanent Secretary (PS) Alfred King and former PS Vibert Welch fumbled for responses to answers posed by the committee.
The Auditor General’s 2015 report documented that $10.279 million had been awarded to a contractor for rehabilitation works at the Indigenous Village at Sophia and that as of December 2015, the contractor had been fully paid, with $280,000 of the amount met by current expenditure.
“On what authority was