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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

$800m madness at YTEPP

by

2574 days ago
20180621

Loans and salary ad­vances to staff, some of which re­main out­stand­ing, a su­pe­ruser who had the abil­i­ty to take a trans­ac­tion from start to fin­ish to the val­ue of $10 mil­lion with no ap­provals and lack of prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures were just some of the is­sues which came to light yes­ter­day, when Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP) of­fi­cials ap­peared be­fore the Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment.

Com­mit­tee mem­bers ex­pressed con­cern that the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which has a man­date to train young peo­ple, seemed to have lost its way and had in­stead been over­run by “mad­ness” and had gone “awry” to the detri­ment of tax­pay­ers, who had spent close to $800 mil­lion on the or­gan­i­sa­tion from 2008-2014.

Things ap­peared to be so wrong at YTEPP that com­mit­tee chair Wade Mark likened it to the leg­end of “Rip Van Win­kle, who slept for 20 years and all kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties were tak­ing place around him he was not aware of.” Of­fi­cials of YTEPP, he said, were “still sleep­ing on the job.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Fitzger­ald Hinds first raised con­cerns over the su­pe­ruser, whom he said ap­peared to have pow­ers that not even the high­est of­fice hold­ers in the coun­try, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent and Chief Jus­tice, had.

YTEPP CEO Nigel For­ge­nie not­ed that the “ini­tial prob­lem arose when YTEPP was giv­en au­thor­i­ty for the pro­cess­ing of stipends. It took the month­ly ex­pen­di­ture re­lease lev­els up to over five mil­lion dol­lars.”

Di­rec­tor of Fi­nance Jerome Grant de­fend­ed the sys­tem, say­ing this was how it was set up by First Cit­i­zens Bank. But both he and For­ge­nie as­sured that when the is­sue was high­light­ed by the in­ter­nal au­di­tor “that pow­er was re­voked.”

But com­mit­tee mem­ber David Small was al­so con­cerned, not­ing a dis­crep­an­cy in the fig­ure, as while For­ge­nie said the five mil­lion was to pay stipends, the fi­nance di­rec­tor said it was eight mil­lion. Small won­dered why the su­pe­ruser was giv­en such abil­i­ty. For­ge­nie said the mon­ey was used for “usu­al salary pay­ments, it is not some­thing done every day but once a month for salary and stipend com­mit­ment.”

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus asked how many OJTs were at YTEPP to gen­er­ate a stipend pay­ment of $8m. For­ge­nie said there were “10 thou­sand trainees on the OJT pay­roll at that time” but promised to pro­vide the specifics in writ­ing.

For­ge­nie, who told the com­mit­tee he had been at YTEPP for 12 years, al­so raised mem­bers’ ire when he con­firmed they gave salary ad­vances or loans.

Asked on what au­tho­ri­sa­tion, he said it was in the Mem­o­ran­dum of As­so­ci­a­tion, adding the lim­it is $10,000 and was usu­al­ly loans for ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es which “must be re­paid dur­ing the course for which the monies are ad­vanced.”

But nei­ther the in­vest­ment di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance nor the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion seemed to be aware YTEPP had such a pol­i­cy.

Chi­ta­manie Sookhoo, of the In­vest­ment Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance Min­istry’s So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Unit, told the com­mit­tee such is­sues do not go to the min­istry.

“The board is there to en­sure there is ad­e­quate pol­i­cy in place,” Sookhoo said.

How­ev­er, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial Car­ol Bick­ram ad­mit­ted they picked up this mat­ter af­ter get­ting the min­utes of a board meet­ing and had sent a let­ter to YTEPP “for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the au­thor­i­ty.”

Small was con­cerned that while For­ge­nie said the loan was $10,000, one em­ploy­ee was cur­rent­ly ow­ing $20,365. He said it was clear “some­thing has gone awry, some­one got a loan and you can’t fig­ure out how to get it back?”

Bap­tiste-Primus urged chair­man Tho­ra Best to take im­me­di­ate steps to en­sure the loans are re­cov­ered once the per­sons were still em­ployed there.

Small al­so ex­pressed con­cern that un­der For­ge­nie’s watch 67 peo­ple got trans­port al­lowances and 82 got cell­phone al­lowances. He said as far as he was aware, this does not hap­pen in any min­istry and “may be an abuse of a fa­cil­i­ty”.

Mark urged the CEO and chair­man to get ac­quaint­ed with the State En­ter­prise Per­for­mance Man­u­al since al­lo­ca­tion of cell­phone and trans­port al­lowances to staff is not per­mis­si­ble un­der it. Mark was con­cerned the loans would even­tu­al­ly be writ­ten off un­der the State Lim­i­ta­tion Act.

“Some­thing is wrong at YTEPP,” Mark de­clared, adding YTEPP did not seem to have a prop­er pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy but in­stead re­lied on staff “in­tegri­ty, hon­esty and trust”.

The com­mit­tee al­so heard an em­ploy­ee was re­spon­si­ble for pur­chas­ing key­boards from Chi­na for an in­ter­net unit, but when rec­on­cil­i­a­tion was done in­voic­es were found to be al­tered. The amount in­volved was $25,000 and the Fraud Squad was called in. In an­oth­er in­stance, an em­ploy­ee al­tered de­liv­ery doc­u­ments for equip­ment which were to be de­liv­ered to a ware­house but went else­where. The em­ploy­ee re­signed be­fore ac­tion could be tak­en.


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