GEA board of directors is not a national secret – Joseph Harmon

Sep 23, 2013 News

Parliamentarian for the APNU Joseph Harmon has described the non disclosure of the Guyana Energy Agency Board of Directors by government as unsatisfactory, noting that it is not a national secret. Harmon was at the time responding to a question about government’s delay in disclosing the names of the Board of Directors for the GEA.
Harmon explained that the majority of public agencies which had a Board of Directors were to be reconstituted when it came to an end. According to Harmon, government had asked the Opposition to submit the names of persons to sit on the various boards. He said that the APNU and the AFC had both submitted names and there was some confusion about who could have submitted the names.
Harmon went on to explain that President Ramotar had extended the life of a number of agency boards until July and then further pushing it to September. According to Harmon government is somehow dealing with the issue in a “piecemeal” manner. “The Board of the GEA is the one that was previously there…it’s the same old one” Harmon said.
He further told Kaieteur News that government needs to stop acting as though it was some secret when in actuality it should be public.
Several days ago Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, had committed to having the Government Information Agency (GINA), disseminate the names of all of the Directors of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA). However, this was not forthcoming.
What GINA did in fact disseminate was a statement by Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds that “the GEA is being run reasonably well.”
Hinds said, too, that there has not been any, and there is no intention to keep secret the names of the members of any Board. “Indeed, our HPS (Dr. Luncheon) reads out those names at his regular post-Cabinet meeting press briefings.”
Responding to the fact that it is only this year that the GEA submitted its annual reports, 13 years after its formation, Dr. Luncheon had stated that this does not necessarily mean that the agency had not been doing any work during that time.
“The fact that 12 years of reports are available suggests that these people have not been slacking…They have been abiding, maybe not 100 per cent in completing their statutory responsibility,” said Dr. Luncheon.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hinds in his response brushed off articles by this newspaper by stating that they have little substance, much conjecture and suggestions, and seem intended to create confusion and illusions of corruption.
He said that as Minister responsible for the operations of the Electricity and Energy Sector, “I sense a need and a duty to set the record straight, dispel any erroneous concerns and doubts, and assure the majority of our Guyanese people, as well as others, that the GEA is being run reasonably well, as well as any other corporate body in Guyana, whether publicly or privately-owned, in the context of Guyana today.”
The Prime Minister conceded, however, that the GEA was many years late in beginning to have reports for tabling in the National Assembly. He said that the GEA is currently in possession of its Audited Accounts and reports up to 2012 audited by the Audit Office of Guyana.
This, he said, would be tabled in the National Assembly soon after sittings are resumed in October.
Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram recently highlighted that with poor accounting practices and no word on who are members of the Board of Directors, the GEA headed by Mahender Sharma, was last year responsible for a whopping US$350M of the nation’s transactions related to fuel purchases from Venezuela.
Ram stated that while the GEA came into existence in late 1997 and commenced operations in 1998, it was more than 12 years before any accounts were tabled in the National Assembly. The records indicate that audited financial statements and not annual reports were tabled in the National Assembly for years up to 2009.
And, according to the GEA 2012 activities, the audits for the years 2010 and 2011 have been completed, but these have not been tabled.

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GEA board of directors is not a national secret – Joseph Harmon

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