Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai has giv­en all min­is­te­r­i­al per­ma­nent sec­re­taries un­til Ju­ly 31 to ex­plain and re­solve is­sues of mal­prac­tice and lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty raised by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Shar­man Ot­t­ley.This was de­cid­ed af­ter Howai held a meet­ing with the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, in­clud­ing Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reynold Coop­er.The meet­ing was held to dis­cuss a damn­ing re­port from Ot­t­ley which showed that Gov­ern­ment min­istries had paid mil­lions of dol­lars in over­pay­ments to con­tract em­ploy­ees with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion or ac­count­abil­i­ty.Among the min­istries high­light­ed was the Min­istry of Sport, un­der which the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme falls. This pro­gramme is cur­rent­ly be­ing au­dit­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Ot­t­ley said an ex­am­i­na­tion of records and doc­u­ments showed non-com­pli­ance with fi­nan­cial in­struc­tions, fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions and oth­er fi­nan­cial di­rec­tives by per­ma­nent sec­re­taries. He al­so said re­ports on ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­counts were not re­ceived from 13 ac­count­ing of­fi­cers by the Au­di­tor's Gen­er­al Of­fice up to Jan­u­ary 31, 2013. At the meet­ing, Howai said all per­ma­nent sec­re­taries would have more than six weeks to re­solve queries of ac­count­abil­i­ty raised by Ot­t­ley, who sub­mit­ted a copy of his re­port to House Speak­er Wade Mark on April 29, 2013.

Ex­press­ing con­cerns about the re­port, Howai called on all per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and their ac­count­ing of­fi­cers to en­quire in­to dis­crep­an­cies.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that hu­man re­source con­straints af­fect­ed all min­istries, Howai drew at­ten­tion to sev­er­al key ar­eas iden­ti­fied in Ot­t­ley's re­port, in­clud­ing late and/or in­com­plete replies to the queries of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, in­ven­to­ry con­trol, over­pay­ments, in­ad­e­quate pay­ment vouch­er records and pay­ments to con­tract em­ploy­ees and sup­pli­ers made with­out the nec­es­sary pa­per­work.Sev­er­al ini­tia­tives were iden­ti­fied for im­prov­ing com­pli­ance in these ar­eas, while the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries raised con­cerns of their own.The meet­ing end­ed with the min­is­ter in­struct­ing all per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to fur­nish him with re­ports de­tail­ing how the breach­es high­light­ed by Ot­t­ley are be­ing re­solved. Ef­forts to con­tact Howai and Coop­er for fur­ther com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as calls to their phones went unan­swered.

What the re­port con­tained

In his re­port the au­di­tor gen­er­al out­lined ex­or­bi­tant in­creas­es by the var­i­ous min­istries. Among these are;

1. In the Min­istry of Sport, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $28.786 mil­lion in 2011 to $395.884 mil­lion in 2012, a vari­ance of $367.098 mil­lion or a 1,275 per cent in­crease.

2. In the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $514,999 mil­lion in 2011 to $2.4 bil­lion, a vari­ance of $1.9 bil­lion or 378 per cent.

3. In the Min­istry of Trans­port, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $218.585 mil­lion in 2011 to $1.1 bil­lion in 2012, a vari­ance of $843 mil­lion or 386 per cent.

4. In the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $62.8 mil­lion to $208.6 mil­lion, a vari­ance of $145.7 mil­lion or 232 per cent.

5. In the Min­istry of Jus­tice, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $126.5 mil­lion in 2011 to $408 mil­lion in 2012, a vari­ance of $281 mil­lion or 222 per cent.

6. In the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $46 mil­lion in 2011 to $137.5 mil­lion in 2012, a vari­ance of $90.9 mil­lion or 194 per cent.

7. In the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, ex­pen­di­ture moved from $1 bil­lion to $1.9 bil­lion, a vari­ance of $924 mil­lion or 90 per cent.