Suc­ces­sive Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports have raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about the way in which pub­lic funds are be­ing ac­count­ed for by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

It is a tail of fail­ure by the THA to pro­vide the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al with the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­u­ments, miss­ing vouch­ers, poor ac­count­ing and a gen­er­al lax ap­proach to ac­count­ing and spend­ing of pub­lic funds.

A 2016 re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al which looked at the 2015 fi­nan­cial year, re­vealed that vouch­ers to­talling al­most $500 mil­lion dol­lars were not pro­duced by the THA for ex­am­i­na­tion .

The 2015 re­port has a sec­tion ti­tled “In­di­vid­ual Ar­eas of Con­cern”, which high­lights “Doc­u­ments Not Pro­duced”.

In item 15 re­lat­ing to the THA it stat­ed: “Vouch­ers to sup­port two trans­fers to­talling $396,900,677 and Sched­ules of Ac­counts record­ing an­oth­er two trans­fers to­talling $101,307,055.73 to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly were not pro­duced for au­dit scruti­ny”.

It must be not­ed that 2015 was a gen­er­al elec­tion year and was al­so the lead up to the THA elec­tion that was held in Jan­u­ary 2016.

The 2016 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port al­so high­light­ed dis­crep­an­cies in ex­pen­di­ture. It not­ed that the Trans­fers to Statu­to­ry Boards and Sim­i­lar Bod­ies in To­ba­go to­talled $2,134,973,173.00, but the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure re­flect­ed on the Ab­stract of pay­ments and the Vote Books (an ac­counts book which is used to record and mon­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture in the pub­lic sec­tor) amount­ed to $1,970,371,243.53, a dif­fer­ence of $164,601,929.47.

More­over in 2013, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­so dis­cov­ered con­flict­ing ac­counts un­der the con­trol of the THA.

It stat­ed: “Ac­cord­ing to the State­ment of Ex­pen­di­ture, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is shown as hav­ing ex­ceed­ed the ap­proved es­ti­mates by $23,729,410.00”.

The THA’s To­tal Ex­pen­di­ture of $2,583,492,509.48 as shown in the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­count dif­fered from the fig­ure of $2,559,763,100, ac­cord­ing to the Vote Book and No­ti­fi­ca­tion of Ex­pen­di­ture.

This over­spend­ing was done even af­ter the THA was al­ready al­lo­cat­ed $2.337 bil­lion in orig­i­nal es­ti­mates for the year and an ad­di­tion­al $223 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary trans­fers. In 2013 the THA was the on­ly en­ti­ty in the cen­tral gov­ern­ment that over­spent af­ter re­ceiv­ing es­ti­mates.

Where did the mon­ey go?

The notes in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Re­ports for T&T has high­light­ed that on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has not been trans­par­ent, ac­count­able nor com­pli­ant when it comes to pub­lic fi­nances over the past ten years.

In the re­ports there are in­stances of over­spend­ing, doc­u­ments not be­ing pro­duced, ir­rec­on­cil­able ac­counts, con­tracts dis­ap­pear­ing, and in one in­stance, the THA was even in con­tra­ven­tion of its fi­nan­cial rules.

In 2017, an is­sue that arose with the un­em­ploy­ment re­lief pro­gramme fund, where the re­port not­ed that there was a dif­fer­ence of $703,693.27 be­tween the cash bal­ance record­ed in the Cash Book and the rec­on­ciled cash bal­ance shown in the Bank Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion State­ment as at 30th Sep­tem­ber 2017.

But this was not the first time prob­lems with the un­em­ploy­ment re­lief fund have arisen. A year be­fore, in 2016, un­der the un­em­ploy­ment pro­gramme, con­tracts were not pro­duced to sup­port pay­ments to ser­vice providers for trans­port ($605,649.80) and for spe­cial projects ($1,460,583.25).

The re­port al­so in­dict­ed: “A per­ma­nent pub­lic of­fi­cer em­ployed with the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties sup­plied trans­port ser­vices to the Di­vi­sion in con­tra­ven­tion of Reg­u­la­tion 16(1) of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Reg­u­la­tions and the Civ­il Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions 137(1).”

Fur­ther­more, the 2016 re­port in­di­cat­ed that bank rec­on­cil­i­a­tion un­der the un­em­ploy­ment re­lief fund were not pre­pared on a reg­u­lar and time­ly ba­sis. It al­so not­ed that the “List of Un­paid Cheques” was in­com­plete in that some cheques were omit­ted.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­port not­ed that the Cash Book fig­ure dif­fered from the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure in the Bank Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion State­ment by $92,617.51.

In 2014, af­ter the THA spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $19 mil­lion on its un­em­ploy­ment pro­gramme, it al­so breached fi­nan­cial codes and spend an­oth­er $49 mil­lion on the said pro­gramme. The re­port in­di­cat­ed: “Fur­ther ex­pen­di­ture on the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme amount­ing to $49,416,337.00 were fund­ed by re­leas­es from the Con­tin­gen­cies Ac­count of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port, the spend­ing con­tra­venes the THA Fi­nan­cial Rule No. 34 which stip­u­lates that “mon­eys shall not be with­drawn from the Con­tin­gen­cies Ac­count oth­er than for the pur­pos­es of meet­ing ur­gent or un­fore­seen ex­pen­di­ture.”

In 2011, the fi­nan­cial state­ments per­tain­ing to the fund were al­so not pre­sent­ed.

The 2011 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port re­vealed that state­ments rec­on­cil­ing the cash bal­ance ac­cord­ing to the records of the THA’s Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties, with the bal­ance cer­ti­fied by the bank, were not pro­duced for au­dit.

The re­port al­so in­di­cat­ed that the au­di­tor gen­er­al, on sev­er­al of the records ex­am­ined, did not see the ev­i­dence of in­ter­nal au­dit checks at the THA.

Ac­cord­ing to the ac­count­ing records in the 2011 re­port, one of the ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the un­em­ploy­ment pro­gramme, “the man­u­fac­ture of fur­ni­ture for sale” lacked struc­ture and trans­paren­cy. The re­port al­so not­ed that up­on ex­am­i­na­tion there was no stan­dard­ized pric­ing struc­ture for fur­ni­ture sold at the work­shop, no record of the items made and no ev­i­dence to in­di­cate that the cus­tomer re­ceived the item.

The re­port added: “Fur­ther, it was not de­ter­mined whether re­ceipts were is­sued for de­posits made on items or­dered.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in the pre­vi­ous year 2010, the notes to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port in­di­cat­ed a dis­crep­an­cy in the fi­nan­cial state­ments of the mon­ey dis­bursed for un­em­ploy­ment re­lief .

The re­port stat­ed: “A State­ment re­flect­ing ex­pen­di­ture of $16,958,952.36 was re­ceived from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in re­spect of the $17,000,000 dis­bursed by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Fi­nance. An ex­am­i­na­tion of the Fi­nan­cial State­ment re­vealed that vouch­ers to­talling $3,808,377.22 were not pro­duced for au­dit.”

The Busi­ness Guardian emailed both Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis and Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Joel Jack for com­ment on the re­cent SBG ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled “A Waste of Tax­pay­ers’ Mon­ey”.

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so asked the sec­re­taries: “How do you re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions of To­ba­go’s poor judg­ment in spend­ing in the years 2015 and 2016?” and “Do you be­lieve that the al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing To­ba­go need­ing stricter over­sight, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy to be of mer­it?”

Up un­til press time, nei­ther Den­nis nor Jack re­spond­ed.