Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith says au­dits will soon be con­duct­ed in­to all the so­cial pro­grammes run by his min­istry, in­clud­ing the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme (CSP), the Na­tion­al Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme (NMP) and Hoop of Life.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the au­dits would be done to ver­i­fy that these youth-fo­cused pro­grammes were "de­liv­er­ing to stake­hold­ers what they are man­dat­ed to do based on the ob­jec­tives of their de­sign."

He said he want­ed to cer­ti­fy that un­der his watch there was pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of funds ear­marked for var­i­ous pro­gramme ac­tiv­i­ties and that all funds were chan­neled di­rect­ly to rel­e­vant per­son­nel and au­thor­i­ties.

Grif­fith said these pro­posed au­dits were not linked in any way to the re­cent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed Life­S­port Pro­gramme as there had been no re­ports of ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, he was of the strong view that it was nec­es­sary at this time to as­sess the im­pact of these pro­grammes.

He added that he strong­ly be­lieved it was in­cum­bent up­on him as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure that "bona fide stake­hold­ers of the CSP, NMP and Hoop of Life pro­grammes con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from these de­vel­op­men­tal plat­forms as in­tend­ed."