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President admits his administration “struggles” with transparency and accountability
While acknowledging that Government has, for a while, been struggling to maintain transparency and accountability in its operations, Head of State Donald Ramotar insisted that steps are being taken in this regard.
The statement was made at the opening of the Seventh Annual meeting of the National Toshaos Council (NTC) even as the President urged that Toshaos pay attention to the theme of the conference, calling for the need to employ ‘good governance’ so as to promote development both as a community and nationally.
President Donald Ramotar
“Good governance is not only at national levels but should be at every aspect of governmental authorities,” he said.
The NTC conference was held under the theme, ‘Culture of Good Governance for Sustained Village Economies.’
While noting that good governance calls for accountability and transparency, the President admitted that even his administration has “been struggling with this for a while now.”
He said that the difficulty comes with changing an old culture into a new one.
“This is the culture that we are building and have been building for the last two decades for our country. It is not always been easy to move to change a culture that existed and build a new one,” he explained.
The President noted however that government has been working to rein in its operations by implementing measures such as audits to ensure accountability and transparency.
Of the steps that he mentioned were audits that are conducted to Government accounts “every single year.” He said that not only are the audits done and the reports sent to Parliament but they are scrutinized by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and then to the Treasury Memorandum for recommendations on correction of the shortcomings.
He added that government has established standing committees in the National Assembly to overlook economic services activities, natural resources, the social sector and the foreign relations sector. These committees are chaired on a rotational basis by both Opposition and Government Parliamentarians so as to ensure transparency, he said.
The President said that transparency is adopted in the billing system for all government projects, whereby all projects are advertised and tenders and awards opened publicly.
The President said that there has not been a single question asked of Government in the National Assembly that has remained unanswered, while mentioning of the establishment of an integrity commission; all in an effort to allow for transparency.
“It is true that with all these measures, we still have problems from time to time,” he admitted.
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