On Monday, Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Member, Juretha Fernandes reminded that the body currently does not have the leverage to summon delinquent public officers to answer questions of accountability and transparency unless legislation is in place.
The APNU+AFC member made these remarks following the committee’s disquiet over a few former public officers who did not turn up before the committee to answer for their spending of government funds while in office.
“So, as it is right now, we cannot operate as though the PAC has any power to summon, because we do not. So, we need to expedite that process to be passed in the National Assembly, so that we can take these courses, but as it is right now, we have to work with the system that we are faced with. And it must be recalled that this is not the first, second or third time we don’t have the persons showing up.”
The PAC, a key watchdog for public accountability and transparency, announced that it is now in the process of drafting legislation which hopefully will be presented to the National Assembly, which will empower the Commit-tee to summon delinquent officers, if there are anomalies.
Former Regional Execu-tive Officer of Region Five, Ovid Morrison, was the subject of discussion after not showing up at the public accounts meeting.
However, Opposition Member Ganesh Mahipaul highlighted that Morrison was not the only individual who didn’t turn up.
Meanwhile, Public Works Minister, Juan Edghill, a member of the PAC from the governing side remarked “We here at the PAC have a formal procedure to deal with the absenteeism of former REOs, have we followed that procedure in seeking to contact him?”
Mahipaul responded, “I am guided that the parliament office sent him a letter and exhausted their means of communication, also I was informed that a letter was sent to the accounting officer for dispatching, however, any further communication that happened is beyond my knowledge.”
He continued “I advised that we go into the report and should the need arise to get that degree of clarity from that former public official, then we will consider how we will charter the course forward.”
Evidently not satisfied with Mahipaul’ s response, Edghill pressed, “I don’t think we have exhausted these efforts enough, because if we cannot get what we want, then we will have to publicise this in the newspaper, and we have been over this already.”
“We will say that this gentleman needs to appear before the PAC at such time to account for what happened during that period. You won’t be an accounting officer, spend government’s money, then disappear before the time of the estimates, or examination of the Auditor General account and you just can’t be available because you are out of the country, or you are not available, or you have another job.
At the time of your appointment, you are fully aware, that you have to account for your stewardship, that is not how things are done,” Edghill asserted.
He added, “We had the same problems with this accounting officer a few years ago when he took the oath of office, he disappeared and then reappeared.”
Mahipaul said that based upon what was told to him by the clerk of the Parlia-mentary Public Accounts Committee, no such action was taken regarding publicising the names of delinquent public officers who were a ‘no show’ at PAC hearings.
Rationale
However, the Public Works Minister contended that this is not the procedure and questioned the rationale for its sudden change.
APNU+AFC Member David Patterson interjected at this point. “If I heard the current accounting officer correctly, we [the PAC] were scheduled to have a meeting three weeks ago, and the former REO said he would have been available then, but PAC has been cancelled for three weeks straight due to the obvious unavailability of the governing side and now, we saying we are going to publish that person’s name.”
He continued, “The person made themselves available at the given time, but it was cancelled, so how does it become a fault of that individual now that he or she is not available at the convenient time of this committee, after it was postponed for three weeks?
“So, because someone is not available at your convenient time, you now want to publish their names in the newspaper, it is the norm for PAC meetings to be rescheduled on short notice, how is it a fault of theirs?” Patterson concluded.
Dr Vishwa Mahadeo, a government PAC member, said that Morrison (the former REO) was out of the country.
Amid this back-and-forth, Fernandes opined that the Committee’s work must not be hindered because an accounting officer has failed to show up.
She added that “on numerous occasions we have been through these issues and my colleague, Sanjeev Datadin, from a legal standpoint said that the PAC currently doesn’t have to power to summon anyone, unless there are legal provisions in place which I am hoping that will be expedited.”
She added, “Hence we have a motion right now being put forward collectively from the PAC to the National Assembly, for the laws to be changed, once done we will be empowered to do such, as of now we cannot operate in a manner as if we have that power, because we don’t.”
Mahipaul, who echoed Fernandes position, said the PAC’s work should not be stymied by the absence of accounting officers, and referenced the drafted legislation which will give the PAC additional powers to ensure that every accounting officer is scrutinised.
Also, on Monday at the PAC, there were questions concerning discrepancies at the regional administration in Region Five (Mahaica- Berbice) where, according to the 2019 Auditor General’s (AG) report, vehicles not listed in the inventory were being fueled.
This was flagged in the Auditor General’s report which had pointed out that the vehicles in question were not listed on the region’s vehicle inventory.
The AG’s report also pointed out that in 2018, there were 41 instances totalling $475,713, where purchases of fuel were made for 26 vehicles.
According to that report, there were 18 instances, totalling $253,913, where 1,195 litres of gasoline were purchased for a vehicle that was not listed in the inventory.
Regional Engineer, Dhanpaul Sukha, proposed that the issue could have been a result of human error.
“At times, what we found is that there is always a mix-up; there’s always some issue on the bill number where they write a number wrong or a letter wrong.”
“So, it doesn’t always match up and that’s where the audit office would’ve picked up that there were vehicles with numbers that don’t coincide with what we have on our inventory,” the regional engineer suggested.
However, Edghill countered with the view that it was quite difficult to locate number plates which had letters that were either mismatched or did not coincide with the model of the vehicle.
He noted that the regional administration would have been in a position to rectify the situation which was flagged by the Auditor General, once these challenges were not encountered.
The PAC also discovered that the requisition process for fuel was erroneously followed and internal documents may have been unintentionally shared with gas stations.
Against this background, the PAC urged the regional officials to be au fait with the correct procedures to avoid recurrences.
The PAC unanimously agreed to examine this matter further at a later date, opting to give the regional administration some time to peruse the information provided by the Auditor General to the committee.
