Four days to Jagdeo’s compliance deadline

Apr 22, 2010 News

The one month deadline that Head of State, President Bharrat Jagdeo, had ordered for compliance as it relates to the outstanding conference advances is about to come to an end. Four days remain.
Jagdeo on March 26 last had ordered that delinquent officials who received conference advances and had not cleared them with the Finance Ministry must comply within a month or their names would be published.
At the time he had told media operatives that he had instructed Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh, to write to the officials who have not cleared their advances.
He said that the directive is that “unless you clear in a month we are going to publish all the names in the newspaper.”
According to Jagdeo, some of the officials had charged that they had cleared their advances and that they have documentation to prove it but it “is just paper work.”
Following reports in this publication as it relates to uncleared monies handed over to officials as conference advances, and the fact that they have not been presenting the necessary documentation to account for how it was spent, this newspaper has been reliably informed that some have started to submit.
The figures for 2008 featured 117 advances to the tune of $29M, bringing the total uncleared advances to some $201M.
According to the 2006 Auditor General report, “Conference Advances continued to be uncleared long after they have been granted.”
It was pointed out that at the time of that audit, in March 2007, there were 377 advances totaling $91.1M for the years 2003 to 2005 that remained uncleared.
The issue recently took centre stage on the agenda of the Public Accounts Committee during scrutiny of the 2006 Auditor General’s report.
During 2006, according to the Conference Advances Register, amounts totaling $180.103M were expended on 287 overseas conferences and official visits, of which 131 advances totaling $57.603M remained outstanding at the time of reporting. The Ministry at that time had stated that while some of the recipients were tardy in clearing their advances, others had submitted documentation to clear their advances, but due to the Department’s staffing situation, there were delays.
It was further stated that the delinquent officers were written to, requesting them to submit documentation to clear their advances.

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Four days to Jagdeo’s compliance deadline

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