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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Auditor General’s work hampered by staff shortages

by

605 days ago
20231109
Assistant Auditor General Shiva Sinanan speaks during the 15th meeting of the Public Accounts Committee yesterday

Assistant Auditor General Shiva Sinanan speaks during the 15th meeting of the Public Accounts Committee yesterday

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment has a 35 per cent staff short­age which has se­vere­ly re­duced its work and its 2022 re­port high­light­ed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, some of which are fair­ly sub­stan­tial, while two oth­er mat­ters are at the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee lev­el and in court.

This in­for­ma­tion was giv­en yes­ter­day by as­sis­tant Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Shi­va Sinanan when mem­bers of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) head­ed by Oropouche West MP Dave Tan­coo.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from Tan­coo about staffing lev­els, Sinanan said there is a 35 per cent va­can­cy lev­el, trans­lat­ing to about 80 au­di­tors.

“We’re cur­rent­ly li­ais­ing with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DPA) to get these va­can­cies filled. We’ve got­ten, over the last two years, some va­can­cies filled in the pro­fes­sion­al and low­er lev­els, so we’re work­ing on it, but this is a prob­lem we’ve been fac­ing for quite a long time.

“The ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex is quite okay but the va­can­cies sit­u­a­tion is re­al­ly crit­i­cal that we need to ad­dress and it’s be­ing ad­dressed as we’ve got­ten sup­port from the Fi­nance Min­istry to fill va­can­cies at the pro­fes­sion­al/tech­ni­cal lev­els over the past two years.”

Sinanan said the va­can­cies are at the low­er and tech­ni­cal lev­els in the au­dit­ing stream and at least nine pro­fes­sion­al lev­el va­can­cies have been filled. He said low­er lev­el staff is much less than in pre­vi­ous years

He said the staff short­ages have had an ef­fect on the De­part­ment’s work as “at least 30 per cent of the work we could have done, couldn’t have been done in the last year. In terms of the scope of work, ar­eas we want­ed to look at, it was se­vere­ly re­duced.”

Sinanan agreed with Tan­coo that va­can­cies for 80 au­di­tors are sub­stan­tial as the Di­vi­sion has to plan in ad­vance to do au­dits.

“Every­body’s es­sen­tial to get a job done . . . so when we have one or two peo­ple miss­ing it re­al­ly af­fects plan­ning.”

He said the 35 per cent va­can­cy lev­el is rel­a­tive­ly new as there were 30 ap­point­ments at the low­est lev­els over the past two years and peo­ple had al­so re­tired. Con­tract em­ploy­ment is done once there’s fund­ing.

The Di­vi­sion has been li­ais­ing with the Fi­nance Min­istry and the DPA on in­ter­views for low­er lev­el posts which are hired through the ser­vice com­mis­sions.

Sinanan said the staff does what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to get the job done to de­liv­er Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports on time, in­clud­ing hav­ing high­er lev­el staff per­form low­er lev­el func­tions. Tan­coo and oth­er PAC mem­bers com­mend­ed the De­part­ment for do­ing a lot of work de­spite the con­straints.

PAC mem­ber Jear­lean John asked about cy­ber­at­tacks and steps tak­en to en­sure da­ta ac­cu­ra­cy. Sinanan said the de­part­ment has an In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) sec­tion staffed by peo­ple who are qual­i­fied in IT au­dit­ing.

“They’ve checked sev­er­al sys­tems in the pub­lic ser­vice be­fore and com­ment­ed on them and they are qual­i­fied to de­ter­mine if the sys­tem was hacked,” he said.

Sinanan agreed that the In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tem (IFMS) at the Trea­sury, which is sup­posed to net­work across min­istries, would help im­prove the De­part­ment’s work. It was due to be­gin in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year but was on­ly im­ple­ment­ed in two min­istries. PAC mem­ber Ayana Web­ster-Roy was shocked at that rev­e­la­tion.

Sinanan said the IFMS is a func­tion of the Trea­sury and his De­part­ment plans to ex­am­ine it once it be­gins. How­ev­er, “push­ing” the project is a func­tion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts.

“We’d be al­most out of line to in­sist they im­ple­ment it,” he said.

Tan­coo urged the De­part­ment to be more ag­gres­sive with the di­vi­sions to get the IFMS go­ing.

Re­port cap­tures ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties

PAC mem­ber Adri­an Leonce asked about fraud, il­le­gal acts and cor­rup­tion in the 2022 au­dit. Sinanan said the De­part­ment re­ferred to such is­sues as “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties”.

“The 2022 re­port cap­tures ar­eas of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, some of them fair­ly sub­stan­tial. Across the board, in most min­istries it’s not that preva­lent. There are is­sues but some­times we can­not pur­sue this since the doc­u­ments aren’t pro­vid­ed, con­tracts not seen,” he ex­plained.

“But that’s as far as we can go on dis­claimers of opin­ion. We can­not say as the doc­u­ments aren’t pro­vid­ed. But to say it’s a clean slate, I don’t think I brought that im­pres­sion.”

Sinanan said when an ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty is found, the De­part­ment takes it to high­er au­thor­i­ties.

“We don’t pur­sue it. With ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties we hand the doc­u­ments over to the Fraud Squad and let them deal with it. If we went ahead we’d be out of line. We au­dit and say what is found, what’s right or wrong.”

“Gen­er­al­ly we’ve found no ma­jor is­sues of fraud. The press would have picked up maybe three is­sues with in­ci­dents in the pub­lic do­main which we wouldn’t com­ment on.

“Two of them are be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee and the courts right now. One was tried and found guilty.”


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