EAT AND DRINK ALL YOU CAN!

Dec 09, 2015 Features / Columnists, PPP Column

It used to be said that “membership has its privileges”. Then it became “friends with benefits”. Now it is membership with uncapped benefits and benefits without caps.
This column deals with the former – the issue of membership with uncapped benefits, particularly membership of certain boards that comes with an unlimited entertainment benefit.
This issue of surface benefits paid to Board members recently surfaced in relation to the payment of meals for the Chairman of one state-owned Board. The value of the claims on that Bill was astronomical and suggests clearly that there were no limits on the amount that could be utilized either at any one time or for the entire year.
When you are living in a poor country there should be caps on entertainment expenses. Governments of poor countries cannot afford to be paying entertainment allowances, more so to Board members. If Ministers of the government either do not enjoy or have limits on such allowances, it seems odd that members of Boards should enjoy such luxuries.
It is a luxury which poor governments cannot afford. If someone can afford to donate their salary increases to communities, then one has to ask whether that person was ever in need of a salary increase. Similarly, if you cannot pay top executives a proper entertainment allowance, why allow a Board member to either have an unlimited allowance or very high allowances.
Major multinationals usually give their top officials an open cheque for entertainment, but these guys are so busy that they hardly abuse it to the extent that it has to be called into question. These companies also have resources greater than the GDP of some poor countries, so their entertainment allowance is a drop in the ocean. Yet, during the financial crisis, there was an uproar over the benefits paid to top executives of banks. This led to some rolling back of benefits.
In Guyana we seem to be doing the very opposite. Instead of curtailing benefits, we seem to be expanding them.
A poor country like Guyana cannot afford the luxury of open-ended entertainment accounts for top officials. If we can cap the benefits for Presidents, we should be able to cap the benefits for top officials.
The top official is not to be blamed for having an excessive entertainment bill. If you are entitled to a benefit and you utilize that benefit then you should not be the one to be blamed. Blame those who granted the benefit in the first place.
Chairpersons of the Boards of public entities should not be entitled to entertainment allowances. Top officials should be. The purpose of the Board is to make policy. Board members should not have to meet clients and customers, and therefore there is no need for any Board member to be paid an entertainment allowance.
A general manager or a person in an executive position should be entitled to an entertainment allowance, since they are the ones who are expected to interface with customers and clients, not Board members who exercise scrutiny over top officials.
There needs to be an investigation into the recent instances reported in the press in which large sums of monies were allocated for entertainment allowances. It needs to be determined by what authority those allowances were paid; whether they were paid to other persons in the past, and why the entertainment bills suddenly stopped after the May 11 elections.

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