Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
Suffering a lack of public accountability
Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran has written a book that examines the issue of public accountability. Indeed in Guyana public accountability is an issue with all the charges of pervasive corruption and a failure on the part of the administration to properly account for monies spent on supposed national programmes.
In 2005 coastal Guyana experienced a flood of gargantuan proportions. People in Guyana made significant contributions to affect those worst affected. People were stranded in their homes and could not access food; some died from a waterborne disease named leptospirosis; farmers and livestock rearers suffered tremendous losses.
Money came from international agencies, including the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Guyana Red Cross. Despite repeated promises an audited account of the receipt and expenditure of the monies has never been done. Soon it will be a decade since the floods.
Guyana also hosted Carifesta for the second time in the history of the regional exposition. Again monies were spent but to date there has not been any presentation of an audited account. And as if this is not enough there has been a decade-long call for monies accruing from the Guyana Lotteries Commission to the government to be paid into the Consolidated Funds.
The Guyana Lotteries Commission, by law, must give the government twenty-four per cent of the sale of each ticket. This money was intended to enhance sports, and facilitate health practices. About three years ago, the lottery company had contributed some $6 billion from its inception. Not one cent of this money has been accounted for.
Needless to say, these actions have only fuelled th4 accusations of theft and corrupt in Government circles. And up until November 28, 2011, the government pretty much ignored the accusations. It was simply saying that it did not need to explain to anyone, not even the electorate.
In his book, Dr Goolsarran notes, “Corruption is the misuse of power for private gain. A misuse of public power occurs when, in the exercise of their duties, politicians and bureaucrats deviate from formal rules or established procedures and in doing so, the public interest is sacrificed in favour of private interest.”
It has not escaped public notice that all of the current crop of politicians are extremely wealthy and have become so after they entered the political arena. Coincident with their acquisition of wealth has been the large extent of substandard work offered in the place of substantial contracts. There is widespread belief that politicians help contractors wrangle a contract and so qualify for a share of the financial allocation.
So we return to the Auditor General reports which highlight overpayments to contractors and the failure or refusal of the contractors to return the extra funds. No action is taken by the government to recover its money and this does not help public confidence.
It does not help when people point to other countries where corrupt people are dealt with condignly. In Guyana they are ignored by both law enforcers and the politician. One of the offshoots of this public accountability in Guyana is mass migration.
Dr Goolsarran notes in his book, “Improving Public Accountability”, that the World Bank concluded that poor governance “has contributed to the deterioration situation (in Guyana) which has been triggered to an unknown extent by drug trafficking activities.” And speaking to a recent study by Prachi Mishra of the International Monetary Fund, “89 out of every 100 Guyanese who had completed tertiary education during the period 1965 to 2005 have migrated…This is the highest migration rate in the Caribbean and several Guyanese commentators have linked this brain drain to not only deteriorating economic conditions, but also to the increasing level of corruption.”
Public accountability would prove to be stimulant that Guyana needs to reach the levels of economic development that the government so loudly proclaims that it wants to reach.
The United States, for example boasts, “Our democracy here in the United States over the last two centuries has weathered the storms of war, economic depression, crime, drugs, corruption and scandal.
“It survives because we make our mistakes openly, we learn from them and we correct them openly. Our government and its officials are politically, financially and legally accountable.”
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