Dear Editor,
Please permit me space to respond to Mr. Jagdeo’s continued attack on me. This time, it was at another a press conference held on Monday, 16 October 2023 where he made the following allegations:
(a) I was Deputy Auditor General for several years during the period 1982 – 1991 when there were no audited public accounts. He had earlier stated that I was Auditor General 8 of the 10 years in question;
(b) My job specifications required that I assist in drafting the Auditor General’s report; I failed to discharge my responsibility; I should have resigned if I had integrity; I collected money by way of salaries from the Treasury for doing nothing; and for doing nothing, I was promoted to Auditor General;
(c) The PPP extended the mandate of the Auditor General to public corporations and other entities in which controlling interest vests in the State;
(d) I made several attempts to have him (Mr. Jagdeo) agree to salary increases for staff of the Audit Office. I even suggested the granting of a loan for this purpose;
(e) I wanted to keep my job while working for the United Nations;
(f) The 2015 APNU election manifesto quoted me as having stated that corruption in public procurement under the PPP was in the order of about 20 percent and I never accepted invitation to discuss the matter.
These statements reminded me of Mr. Jagdeo’s public attack on me as a result of the “dolphin scam” that precipitated my departure from the Audit Office ten years before my retirement age.
I was Deputy Auditor General from 1 December 1987 to 17 September 1990, a mere 21 months, during which period, I was on six months overseas training. That left me with a mere 15 months to perform duties as Deputy AG. My responsibilities included not only assisting the Auditor General in the drafting of his reports to the National Assembly but also: (i) performing the duties of Accounting Officer, managing the finances of the Audit Office and accountable to the Public Accounts Committee; (ii) organizing and managing the work of the Audit Office with a staffing of close to 200; (iii) monitoring the work of the various audit units undertaking audits of not only Ministries/Departments/Regions but also public enterprises, statutory bodies, local government bodies and trade unions, and providing the necessary technical guidance and assistance; and (iv) providing training to the audit staff. While it is true that during the period 1982 to 1991, there were no audited public accounts, the fact is that the Government did not submit draft financial statements to the Auditor General. Therefore, in the absence of these statements, there could not have been audited accounts. Indeed, the Auditor General could not have pronounced on a non-existent set of accounts! The Government’s explanation was that the IBM 3/15 mainframe computer used for the processing of the Government’s financial transactions had “crashed” and as a result it was not possible to prepare draft public accounts for audit. My 1992 report to the Assembly, to be found on the Audit Office’s website, dealt extensively with the issue.
Article 224 (4) of the Constitution specifically states that in the exercise of his duties, the Auditor General shall not be subject to direction or control of any person or authority. Therefore, how can the Deputy AG, a subordinate, direct what the Auditor General should do, although he/she may be a source of influence? That apart, the Auditor General could not be faulted if there were no audited public accounts for the years 1982 to 1991. However, the accounts of all the other entities which numbered over 200 and comprising statutory bodies, public enterprises, trade unions, municipalities, neighbourhood democratic councils and foreign-funded projects, were duly audited and reported on. Additionally, preliminary audits were carried out on all Ministries/Departments/Regions and the related reports were issued to the heads of those agencies, pending the submission of draft financial statements. In 1993, the Audit Act was amended to extend the mandate of the Auditor General to the audit of public corporations and all other entities in which controlling interest vests in the State. Both my predecessor and I held the view that wherever the State had controlling interest, the Auditor General must be involved. Matters came to a head when the then Minister of Finance removed me as the auditor of the Bank of Guyana. The matter was brought to the attention of the President who summoned both of us to a meeting. He stated that when he was Opposition Leader he always wondered why the Auditor General was not involved in the auditing of public corporations. As a matter of policy he must be involved, and if the law does not provide for this, we must amend the law’. The related Bill was piloted through the Assembly by none other than Mr. Jagdeo.
Ironically, it was Mr. Jagdeo at the handing over of my 1995 report on the public accounts who had stated that the World Bank did not want the Auditor General to audit projects it was financing because of a lack of capacity. The media took Mr. Jagdeo to task for siding with the Bank at a time when I was doing my utmost to build such capacity and to professionalise the Audit Office. After the handing-over ceremony, Mr. Jagdeo, clearly embarrassed, wanted us to issue a joint statement. I declined to do so. When I joined the Audit Office, the salaries payable were inadequate to attract and retain the much-needed skills. I make no apologies for my persistent representations to improve the emoluments and conditions of service for staff members. There was a World Bank loan that was used at the time to pay certain officers US$ tax-free salaries. I enquired whether the Audit Office could benefit from this facility in order to attract qualified accountants, though I was totally against the tax-free portion. It was perhaps this loan to which Mr. Jagdeo was referring. Was there something wrong in what I did?
In 2001, I was in Seoul, South Korea, attending an international conference. The United Nations representative circulated a vacancy notice for resident auditors for the peacekeeping operations on a short-term basis. At that time, I had eight months accumulated vacation leave to my credit. I decided to apply for the position because I wanted to do something beneficial with my leave and to be away from what had become for me a very stressful work environment. I was successful in my application. I then applied for special leave of absence, utilizing my accumulated vacation leave. Approval was granted and after serving six months, the United Nations issued a Note Verbale to the Government requesting my service for the next six months. The Government readily approved my extension of service, utilizing the rest of my leave and with no-pay leave for the remaining four months. There were two other extensions with the approval of the Government. However, I was concerned about being away from the job for so long. I began to debate within myself whether I was doing the right thing by staying away from Guyana. Was it not time to return home and continue from where I left off? Was it fair to the country that I should continue to deprive it of my services for so long? Should I put my personal interest ahead of the public interest? These were thoughts that ran through my mind while pondering whether or not I should return home and resume my duties.
And so, I returned home and resumed duties as Auditor General on 1 September 2004. Suffice it to state that at no time did the Government object to my going on special no-pay leave nor was there any concern about my remaining Auditor General while serving the United Nations. During the period of my absence, my Deputy acted as Auditor General. Four months later, I demitted office, following the Government’s reaction to the “dolphin scam”. In relation to procurement, I went through the APNU+AFC 2015 Election Manifesto and found no evidence of what Mr. Jagdeo was saying. In August 2016, I had written an article in the Stabroek News in which I stated that for decades there were various forms of abuse and leakages in our procurement systems. I listed 12 areas, including:
(a) Poor choice of projects for major infrastructure development works and their financing arrangements, resulting mainly from political considerations instead of sound economic analyses and detailed studies by independent professionals to assess the feasibility and long-term viability of the projects. The Amaila Falls Hydro Project, the Marriott Hotel, the Berbice River Bridge, the Fibre Optic Cable Project and the East Bank Road Expansion Project readily come to mind;
(b) Inadequate or incorrect specifications for goods/services and the execution of works, due to inexperience of those involved, or political intervention;
(c) Deliberately targeting major infrastructure works where the quantum of such ‘kickbacks’ was large;
(d) Inadequate monitoring and supervision due in some cases to collusion, resulting in defective work being performed; and
(e) Short delivery of goods and services, resulting in overpayment to suppliers.
I further stated that with the benefit of watching over our procurement systems for about 15 years, my best estimate of the extent of leakages was in the order of 20 percent. In other words, for every $100 we spent on procurement, we received only $80 in value. With approximately 70 percent of the National Budget devoted to the procurement of goods and services and the execution of works, the extent of leakages in our procurement system was in the order of $32 billion annually, using the approved Estimates for 2016. I did not use the words “corruption’ and “fraud”, as claimed by Mr. Jagdeo. At a seminar I held at GuySuco around the same time, participants were organized in six groups. They were asked to provide their best estimate of the extent of procurement leakages, using the 12 areas referred to above. When the results were analysed, each group came up with estimates ranging from 20 percent to 25 percent! Professor Clive Thomas also believes that the leakages were in the order to 20 percent. It is untrue that I was requested to justify my assessment on procurement leakages and that I declined. I recall that at a reception at the British High Commissioner’s residence, Mr. Jagdeo challenged me to a debate on television in relation to the aborted Amaila Falls Project. I accepted the invitation and Mr. Jagdeo promised to get back to me. He never did.
Finally, in June 2019, I wrote an article titled “Procurement breaches span successive administrations”. In that article, I stated that since the restoration of public accountability in 1992, successive reports of the Auditor General have been highlighting significant breaches in procurement at government agencies. We provided extracts from the executive summaries of seven reports of the Auditor General (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017) highlighting his findings and recommendations. In 2017, the APNU+AFC was in office.
Sincerely,
Anand Goolsarran