Af­ter all the histri­on­ics and hys­te­ria be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al over the sub­mis­sion of the pub­lic ac­counts for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, the ac­tu­al doc­u­ment in­spires both de­ja vu and de­spair.

Year af­ter year, Au­di­tors Gen­er­al have sub­mit­ted re­ports out­lin­ing vari­a­tions of the ex­am­ples out­lined in the 2023 re­port.

In the ju­di­cia­ry, two cheques to­talling $879,946 were dis­bursed to a con­trac­tor at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023, but the con­tract in re­la­tion to the ex­pen­di­ture was dat­ed De­cem­ber 19, 2023. In ad­di­tion, a com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate was not seen for full pay­ment for this project.

The ju­di­cia­ry al­so un­der­took the sup­ply, de­liv­ery, in­stal­la­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of core au­dio­vi­su­al hard­ware, wiring and pro­gram­ming for 69 court­rooms through­out the coun­try. This is ob­vi­ous­ly a cru­cial el­e­ment in speed­ing up the de­liv­ery of jus­tice in T&T, which every­one, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, agrees is of ex­treme im­por­tance in ad­dress­ing the crime scourge plagu­ing the coun­try.

How­ev­er, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said a con­tract agree­ment for $34.4 mil­lion, in­clud­ing ex­pen­di­ture on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Hall of Jus­tice and mag­is­trates’ courts, was not pro­duced for au­dit and so com­ple­tion of the work could not be ver­i­fied.

Un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Cab­i­net ap­provals and signed lease agree­ments were not seen for prop­er­ties oc­cu­pied by the Gov­ern­ment Print­ery and Na­tion­al Archives. De­spite the ab­sence of signed lease agree­ments, rent was paid month­ly in the amounts of $249,000 and $93,375 re­spec­tive­ly, for the two prop­er­ties. As a re­sult, the terms and con­di­tions of the lease arrange­ment could not be de­ter­mined.

Un­der the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, a to­tal of 15 de­part­ments did not pro­duce doc­u­ments to sup­port pay­ment of pub­lic monies to­talling $386.05 mil­lion for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion. This in­cludes $231.03 mil­lion in ex­pens­es in con­nec­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The prover­bial man in the street is en­ti­tled to ask how a con­trac­tor can be paid if the con­tract that de­ter­mines the pay­ment has not been com­plet­ed? And how dif­fi­cult is it to pro­duce doc­u­ments to sup­port the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds?

The ex­am­ples cit­ed above are but a few of the many show­ing a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty in the pub­lic sec­tor out­lined in the 2023 re­port. And sim­i­lar ex­am­ples can be found in all of the past Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­ports. This is not to say that some of the rev­e­la­tions in the most re­cent re­port are not shock­ing.

It is al­most be­yond be­lief that this coun­try’s sys­tem of pro­cure­ment was not ro­bust enough to pre­vent the fraud in­volved in the pay­ment of US$26,000 to an In­done­sian com­pa­ny for the pur­chase of four laser analy­sers for use by scrap met­al in­spec­tors. Ba­sic due dili­gence would have re­sult­ed in red flags be­fore the pay­ment was made.

It is clear the sys­tem of en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the spend­ing of pub­lic funds has failed.

The cur­rent sys­tem in­volves ac­count­ing of­fi­cers, most­ly per­ma­nent sec­re­taries or oth­er high-rank­ing pub­lic ser­vants, be­ing ques­tioned be­fore Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tees, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

The Gov­ern­ment must con­sid­er both the car­rot and the stick in seek­ing to im­prove the cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty in the pub­lic ser­vice. It is im­per­a­tive that some of the scan­dalous prac­tices, such as mak­ing pay­ments be­fore con­tracts are signed, be out­lawed.

It might al­so be help­ful if di­vi­sions of the pub­lic ser­vice are scored, ranked and re­ward­ed for their ad­her­ence to an agreed set of ac­count­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria.