Poor record keeping at Indigenous Affairs Ministry hampers AG’s audit

Oct 22, 2016 News

Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Sydney Allicock

The poor record keeping at the Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs is of serious concern to the Auditor General, Deodat Sharma. The Auditor General said that the absence of basic accounting procedures acted as a barricade in the way of the thorough state audit he attempted to carry out at that ministry.
In his 2015 report, Sharma noted that it is a requirement for the Ministry to maintain a contract register to record the details of all contracts awarded, so that the ministry can monitor the progress and payments of these contracts.
However, Sharma said that “it was again observed for 2015 that the contract register was still not properly written up to reflect all contracts awarded by the Ministry.”
Further, he said that contracts were still given a new contract number every time a progress payment was made.
As such, Sharma said that it was difficult for his Auditors to ascertain how many contracts were awarded by the Ministry and to determine the status of those contracts where more than one payment was effected.
It was indicated that this problem has been highlighted before by the Office of the Auditor General.
In Sharma’s report he said, “It was again observed” indicating that this was a long standing problem. Kaieteur News understands that the problem started under the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic administration and continued under the APNU+AFC government.
Sharma said that the Audit Office “again recommends” that the ministry ensures that the contract register is properly written up and that the systems put in place are functioning properly.
The Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs responded to Sharma’s concerns. The Head of Budget Agency indicated that a contract register was in place.
“However, it was not properly maintained in 2015. This situation has been corrected in that the Ministry has now put systems in place to have the contract register properly written up.”

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