Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Franklin Khan says au­dits for oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will be­gin at week's end.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the court ap­pear­ances on Mon­day of four Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) em­ploy­ees on cor­rup­tion charges.

Speak­ing to re­porters at a Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri's) sem­i­nar, Khan said the al­le­ga­tions were a cause for con­cern.

"Four of­fi­cers from the CT­TRC, pub­lic ser­vants I might add, have been charged with ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and I don't want to com­ment on that in any de­tail be­cause it is be­fore the courts but it re­al­ly does not look good in terms of the cor­po­ra­tion and its man­age­ment."

While he de­clined to say which of the oth­er 13 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions would be au­dit­ed, Khan said he had start­ed the ball rolling.

"It is some­thing we have heard of a lot in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form con­sul­ta­tion, that there are in­stances of pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion in the cor­po­ra­tions and I have re­quest­ed the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to con­duct au­dits in the spe­cif­ic cor­po­ra­tions that I will not name right now, to see if this thing is more wide­spread than we think. The au­dit will start lat­er this week by in­ter­nal au­di­tors from the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment," he added.

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form aimed at giv­ing greater au­ton­o­my to the cor­po­ra­tions com­ing, Khan said Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment would have to keep a close eye on the sit­u­a­tion.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, Khan told those present from the cor­po­ra­tions that they must take their jobs as ac­count­ing of­fi­cers se­ri­ous­ly.

"Those of you who are pub­lic of­fi­cers and are ac­count­able for state re­sources, take that job se­ri­ous­ly.

"Dur­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form con­sul­ta­tion, which was strange to me, most of the ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion were not lev­elled against the coun­cils, it comes to the ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­cause you are the guys that ef­fect the work and you are the ones who sign the doc­u­ments that the work is cer­ti­fied cor­rect and done, etc.

"It is your names that sign on the cheques. At the end of the day, if an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has to take place it is not the coun­cil or the chair­man, it's not the may­or. The on­ly cheque the may­or could sign is from the May­or's Fund," he said.

Re­veal­ing that Cab­i­net had ap­proved $100 mil­lion for rur­al de­vel­op­ment last week, Khan called for qual­i­ty as­sur­ance on all fu­ture projects.

"Qual­i­ty as­sur­ance must be ap­plied at every step of the process, from the ten­der­ing process to the plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of the work and de­tailed as­sess­ments be­fore cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is ap­proved.

"Qual­i­ty as­sur­ance is so im­por­tant. Some­thing has gone fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong, both in terms of our cost es­ti­mate, our project and con­tract man­age­ment," he said.

Ques­tion­ing the high costs at­tached to projects, Khan said the min­istry need­ed to come back down to ba­sics.

"All of a sud­den, every­thing in Trinidad costs $100 mil­lion. You look at some of these projects and ask your­self what is it in these projects that cost $100 mil­lion? You look at a con­tract that has been award­ed for $10 mil­lion to build a re­tain­ing wall and you ask your­self the ques­tion, where is this mon­ey go­ing? We have to come back down to ba­sics," he added.