Limited financial resources put severe strain on Auditor General’s office

Apr 05, 2017 News

By Abena Rockcliffe-Campbell
Auditor General Deodat Sharma has admitted that his office is falling behind in the execution of some

Auditor General,
Deodat Sharma

of its duties. Sharma was keen to note, however, that the backlog is no fault of his employees. He is of the opinion that they are all pulling their weight, but the work to employee ratio is simply imbalanced. Sharma said that he wanted to hire more people to make things better, but financial resources do not permit.
Minister of Finance Winston Jordan refused to give the Audit Office the amount of money it requested citing constraints. The proposed estimate for this agency was $771,215,000 but Jordan recommended the sum of $754,910,000. Back then, the Opposition argued vehemently for the agency to be granted its full amount requested, given its extreme importance for the maintenance of transparency and accountability in Guyana.
Opposition Member Irfaan Ali, who also serves as head of the Public Accounts Committee, sought to justify the reasons why the Audit Office had proposed that sum. He was, however, stopped in his tracks by the Speaker of the House, who reminded Ali that his actions were not in keeping with the agreed order in which the Committee of Supply would operate.
There were repeated questions from the Opposition seeking for Jordan to justify why the proposed sum for the Office was reduced. The Finance Minister however maintained that the sums recommended were in keeping with the revenue profile of the nation. The sum of $754.9M was subsequently put to a vote and passed by the House.
At the end of the first quarter, the Audit Office is realizing the impact of reduced funds.
Sharma told Kaieteur News that the reduced amount was earmarked for the funding of a few extra personnel. “What I had to do was reassign my priorities for now. In other words, I had to divide the duties among the staff.”He said that the office is under pressure “but we will have to work with what we have. I mean we still got other things that we would like to do”.
In this regard, Sharma noted that there are several accounts that need to be brought up to date but cannot at this point.”If we had to bring, let us say, 10 accounts up to date, we might only be able to bring about seven.”
The Auditor General was keen to note that the accounts that need to be brought up to date are those of statutory bodies not Central Government. “Central Government is on track. We need to look at the municipalities and the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils, but we do not have enough staffers.
The Auditor General Office is also saddled with several other special investigations including one into the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
For GECOM, auditors are looking into the purchase of high frequency radios; toners for printers and photocopiers and pliers and nippers. And they have to investigate GPHC’s recent purchase of hundreds of millions dollars worth of drugs. Meanwhile, the Office still has to produce a yearly report on the spending of Central Government.