Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) had the doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy mil­lions spent on over­seas trav­el, but a sim­ple ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ure meant those records were nev­er sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2024 re­port flagged $6.8 mil­lion in over­seas trav­el pay­ments by the THA that could not be ver­i­fied be­cause doc­u­men­ta­tion was not pro­vid­ed. The re­port said the trans­ac­tions were processed us­ing the Au­to­mat­ed Clear­ing House (ACH), but with­out sup­port­ing records, au­di­tors were un­able to con­firm who trav­elled, where, and at what cost.

Au­gus­tine, in his re­sponse to the find­ings, said the doc­u­ments do ex­ist, how­ev­er, he will still in­ves­ti­gate some ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

“The ACH trans­ac­tions are re­al­ly on­line-based trans­ac­tions, and so the doc­u­men­ta­tion for those trans­ac­tions will re­main on­line.”

He said he on­ly be­came aware of the miss­ing records once the re­port was tabled in Par­lia­ment.

“I can’t un­der­stand at this junc­ture why those trans­ac­tions ... those doc­u­ments were not print­ed and sim­ply giv­en to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. I saw the re­port on­ly when it was laid in Par­lia­ment. I did not get the ben­e­fit of see­ing a man­age­ment let­ter.”

“Had I re­ceived a man­age­ment let­ter, I would have cer­tain­ly in­struct­ed that the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments be print­ed and giv­en to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. That’s a sim­ple, sim­ple mat­ter.”

Au­gus­tine al­so de­fend­ed the THA’s ap­proach to trav­el, say­ing it fol­lowed the same rules set by the Min­istry of Fi­nance for all pub­lic ser­vice trav­el.

“The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has, in fact, adopt­ed the (Min­istry of Fi­nance) cir­cu­lar from the min­istry in terms of over­seas trav­el, and we fol­lowed those cir­cu­lars to a T.”

He ex­plained how ap­provals are giv­en be­fore pub­lic of­fi­cers are al­lowed to trav­el abroad.

“The process is that there must be an ex­it coun­cil note ap­prov­ing the trav­el, the ex­ec coun­cil notes, once that gets ap­proval, then ac­coun­tants are to fol­low the cir­cu­lar in pro­vid­ing strict­ly, based on the cir­cu­lar, what the per diems and the nec­es­sary spend would be.”

De­spite in­sist­ing the THA act­ed with­in the rules, Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted the sit­u­a­tion at the Di­vi­sion of Tourism is se­ri­ous enough to war­rant an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“So this mat­ter, tourism, is ac­tu­al­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as we speak.”

He said steps were be­ing tak­en to im­prove over­sight.

“We did pro­vide some train­ing for pub­lic of­fi­cers in terms of how to man­age those cir­cu­lars and how to op­er­ate with­in the con­fines of those cir­cu­lars. Some ad­di­tion­al train­ing will be pro­vid­ed to en­sure that there are no fu­ture er­rors on that mat­ter.”

The THA was one of the most scru­ti­nised en­ti­ties in the re­port. Apart from the un­ver­i­fied trav­el ex­pen­di­ture, the re­port flagged the As­sem­bly for its spend­ing on con­tract and short-term em­ploy­ment, as well as se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, all of which were among the high­est in the coun­try.

The As­sem­bly spent $226.9 mil­lion on con­tract em­ploy­ment and $21.6 mil­lion on short-term work­ers, mak­ing it the sec­ond-high­est spender on con­tract staff among all min­istries and agen­cies.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed wide­spread overuse of short-term hir­ing through­out gov­ern­ment, with some in­di­vid­u­als re­tained for pe­ri­ods far be­yond the le­gal six-month cap — a prac­tice the re­port warned could ex­pose the state to le­gal li­a­bil­i­ty.

In ad­di­tion, the THA racked up $78.7 mil­lion in se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es, the sec­ond-high­est of any pub­lic en­ti­ty.

Na­tion­al­ly, 84 per cent of all se­cu­ri­ty spend­ing was not ver­i­fi­able due to the lack of con­tracts, rais­ing ques­tions about pro­cure­ment prac­tices.