RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee Pub­lic Ac­count (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee chair­man Wade Mark yes­ter­day ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self-Help Ltd’s fail­ure to sub­mit its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the years 2017 to 2019.

Mark, who was speak­ing dur­ing the JSC sit­ting in the Par­lia­ment, threat­ened to bring the com­mit­tee back to the JSC in De­cem­ber to fur­ther ex­plain to the coun­try why they had re­neged on the promise to sub­mit the doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Mark said the fi­nan­cial state­ments were sup­posed to ar­rive by June 30, 2022 and asked why it was not sub­mit­ted.

The com­mit­tee’s ac­counts man­ag­er Avanel Hen­dricks said there was a de­lay be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We are very dis­ap­point­ed that this Na­tion­al Self-Help Com­mis­sion has been spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ monies for the last five years with­out any ac­count­abil­i­ty via sub­mis­sions of your fi­nan­cial au­dit­ed state­ments to this Par­lia­ment,” Mark said.

“So we want to put Na­tion­al Self-Help Com­mis­sion on no­tice that we are hold­ing, you have al­ready dis­ap­point­ed us be­cause we were told by Na­tion­al Self Help Com­mis­sion that their 2017, 2018 and 2019 re­port would have been sub­mit­ted by June 30 and we are now in No­vem­ber and al­most a few months af­ter and we are now be­ing told that we will have the 2017 re­port, au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­port, by next week, so I want to put you on no­tice that we will be hold­ing this dead­line se­ri­ous­ly,” he added.

Hen­dricks, up­on be­ing ques­tioned by Mark dis­closed that the pre­vi­ous au­di­tors’ ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed be­cause hav­ing served for four years, they thought it was time for a change. She al­so said the new au­di­tors on­ly start­ed on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021.

Mark al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the non-ap­point­ment of a CEO by the board of di­rec­tors. How­ev­er, he was as­sured by the in­ter­im CEO Adri­an Win­ter that the process is un­der­way and there should be a per­ma­nent CEO ap­point­ment by Jan­u­ary 2023.

The bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for 2022-2023 is $21 mil­lion, which cov­ers not on­ly grants but de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

With re­spect to grants, as­sur­ances were made that per­sons whose ap­pli­ca­tions would have been de­nied would be con­tact­ed and in­formed. How­ev­er, it was not­ed that mea­sures were be­ing put in place to re­view the cri­te­ria and strength­en the pol­i­cy, mak­ing it more sol­id.