Wanton waste at Guyana Elections Commission

Nov 19, 2012 News

– Auditor General

Auditor General Deodat Sharma has said that the Guyana Elections Commission continued to be in breach of the stores regulations as audits of the stores in Kingston and the Bond at Coldingen ECD, have revealed several discrepancies.
The AG in the 2011 Auditor General Report stated that a number of the discrepancies were reported in previous years.
Some of the discrepancies, the AG noted in the report, were that both stores had large quantities of unserviceable and expired items that were to be assessed and valued before disposal. Another discrepancy was that items in stock at the Kingston and Coldingen stores were not properly stored to facilitate easy verification.
According to the AG, the bond at Coldingen was cluttered with items that had become obsolete. He noted that some of the items included 878 print cartridges which cost $3.55M; water soaked, expired acid; leaked or corroded “D” batteries, which are worth around $528,525 and a quantity of model 669 Polaroid films with an estimated value of $16.153M.

Auditor General Deodat Sharma

It was recommended that GECOM should complete the reconciliation exercise so that their stores record could be updated and submitted for audit inspection. Further, the AG said that in terms of obsolete items, a losses report should be submitted to the Finance Secretary to have the losses written off.
Moreover, in the year 2009, there were seven outstanding advances totaling $1.633M on the Commission’s standing imprest account. It was noted that at the time of the AG’s report, four advances totaling $1.046M remained outstanding. The Commission, in response to the advance payments issue, stated that one officer with an advance outstanding in the sum of $313,495 was now deceased. Further it was noted that two persons who were no longer employed by GECOM had submitted vouchers to clear advances totaling $206,978.
Meanwhile, it was observed that vouchers in one of the submissions were insufficient to clear the sum advanced, whilst the CEO had custody of the other voucher and an advance of $500,000 which was uplifted on June 8, 2006 by a senior management official, which was reportedly stolen after a fire on September 9, 2006. According to the AG, the advance was for the sole purpose of offsetting elections expenses. It was noted that the Commission was still awaiting a police investigation of the matter.