Short on the funding and staff needed to ensure its ability to monitor for compliance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to hike fees for permits and services from next year, according to Executive Director Dr Vincent Adams, who says it was recently discovered that permits issued for almost 900 operations had expired due to lack of oversight.
The EPA’s current fees, which have not been adjusted for over two decades, have been labelled “chicken feed” by Minister of Finance Winston Jordan, who has urged that the EPA increase them to meet its financial needs.
“I asked for an update on all permits and it was discovered that nearly 900 permits had expired. That means we have nearly 900 operations just ongoing with no oversight. We do not know who is doing what. As you know, we currently have-and have had for the longest-a shortage of staff. We asked for increases in staffing and for the salaries of employees but was told that government doesn’t have and we should be innovative and find ways of meeting that need. We were told too that the fees we charge is chicken feed and needs revising. The funding for 2019 staff has also been cut by half,” Adams told Stabroek News in an interview last week.
“Minister Jordan was correct and I’m glad he lit this fire under us. However, we cannot do this in a month or a year, so it is a process and we will be increasing the fees to get the needed finance for the equipment and personnel that is needed here. We hope to by next year, increase the fees for permits and other services. Those haven’t seen an increase since 1996. We have an agency that has to be grounded in science and we don’t have a single engineer, hydrologist, petroleum engineer and the likes. We have to get our act together now, more so that we will from next year be an oil producing country and that is a sector that requires strict monitoring,” he added.
Adams said that since taking up the post late last year, he has been doing an overall analysis of the agency and is shocked, not only at the composition of the 97 member staff, but also at the fact that that the agency cannot provide even basic materials to its employees.
“We have five biologists and four chemists…and persons who graduated with Environmental Science degrees but have no specialisation or any real science and engineering exposure. There was a forensic audit in 2015, which I have read, that outlined the state this agency is in. It also made recommendations and listed personnel we might need. We do not have the requisite staff but the funding for 2019 staff was cut by half. We will need petroleum engineers, we have none. We need hydrogeologists, none are on staff. We need legal staff because this agency will be doing a lot of legal work but we do not have lawyers or legal help. I just did an expression of interest to see what is out there. Can you imagine that if staff goes out in the field to monitor now they don’t have reliable equipment? They have to measure air, water, soil, but we don’t have the equipment to provide any measurements. How can this agency function? So we must go and purchase equipment, we have to get staff, have to get vehicles; these are things we have to fund but we are not going to get it done through budget alone,” he said.
He continued, “We are advertising for specialists but how are we going to pay them? How are we going to get that money? When I made a statement on budget, Minister Jordan came out and he said revise chicken feed fees. He is right because since 1996 when this agency was established, we have not raised our fees. If you check Bank of Guyana you would see inflation would have been five percent per year and that is not reflected in our fees. So we are looking at revising the fees to what it worth currently,” he stated.
He lamented that while he hopes to make the agency a model one, salaries have to also be attractive. Again, he pointed to a 2016 audit of the EPA. “We have the highest staff turnover among government agencies and the key reason is salary and working environment. They are not getting money or the equipment to conduct their jobs effectively,” the EPA Head stated.
The audit Adams made reference to was done by former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran, who reported that not only is the agency inadequately staffed, but concluded that the salaries offered are unattractive and has resulted in a high staff turnover.
Goolsarran was tasked with conducting a forensic audit of the EPA and was subsequently requested by the Minister within the Ministry of Finance to do additional work.
In a supplementary report on the forensic audit and review of the EPA, which was uploaded to the Ministry of Finance’s website last Thursday, he said that the agency has been operating with severe staff constraints.
It was stated that the Ministry of Natural Resources had approved a staff structure of only 97, whereas the agency estimated that 262 officers were needed to properly discharge its mandate. Based on a table contained in the report, though 45 staff members were desired for technical services, there were none at May, 2015. Out of the 90 persons desired for environmental management compliance, there were only 27. Other areas where there were staff shortages were biodiversity management, environmental management permitting, administrative services and education, information and training.
Goolsarran noted that environmental management compliance and the environmental management permitting departments are the “backbone of the agency” and combined, they were operating with a staff strength of approximately 38 percent of the deserved level.
“This, coupled with high staff turnover due to the low levels of salaries offered, would have had an exacerbating effect on the operations of not only these two divisions, but also for the organisation as a whole,” he said.
With regard to the low level of emoluments, the report said that the salaries were not attractive enough to recruit and retain adequate numbers of qualified and trained personnel, as the salary scales were similar to those of the traditional public service.
Goolsarran cited as an example, the position of legal officer, which attracted a salary of $262,107 per month and the Finance Officer, a professionally qualified accountant, earning $226,362 per month, to illustrate the situation. It was stated that although the agency is semi-autonomous, with its own legislation and a board, there was “an over-involvement in decision-making by the then Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, as well as the Public Service Ministry, especially in the area of recruitment.”
Adams said that not much has changed at the agency since the audit.
He explained that his focus for this year would be getting the defaulted operations into compliance before the move to increase fees. He said that the EPA has been calling on persons to come in and get their permits up to date and stated that those monies would be put into the agency’s operations.
He is still hoping that the Ministry of Finance will assist the agency in getting some of the basic needed equipment, while proffering that if Minister Jordan “can inject some money for this year so we can get equipment, that would be money well spent”.
He is asking the public to bear with the agency as it builds capacity and implements measures for smooth operations and oversight. “When I got here there were some key areas I planned to focus on before turning to others but I had to switch gear and getting these permits into compliance is now my biggest focus. You cannot have nearly 900 expired permits,” he said.
“If everything works out fine, I am pretty confident we will be on a much better footing; much much sounder footing by 2020,” he added.
