Over five months later …PAC report remains stalled up by Parliamentary system

May 27, 2017 News

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By Kiana Wilburg
It has been well over five months since the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) would have laid a report in the National Assembly regarding its assessment on the accounts of the nation for the years 2010 and 2011.

Its review was made after analyzing the reports of the Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, for the said periods.
It appears, however, that the PAC will have to wait sometime before it can be provided with a response to its report for 2010 and 2011 from the Ministry of Finance.
The report from the Ministry is referred to as a Treasury Memorandum. This document speaks to the actions the government of the day intends to take regarding a series of financial lawlessness and irregularities that would have been outlined in the Auditor General’s report.
Once the PAC’s report is laid, the Finance Minister has 90 days to prepare a Treasury Memorandum.
The latest report from the PAC was laid on November 28, last year. Kaieteur News contacted Clerk of the National Assembly, Sherlock Isaacs on Wednesday last, to clarify Parliament’s approach in this regard.
“The report (by the PAC) is still to be adopted. When the PAC report is laid, it is presented by the Chairperson, then there is a motion for its adoption. When it is adopted then it becomes the property of the National Assembly,” Isaacs said,
“Then I will take action. When it is adopted, I then send that report; I write the Ministry of Finance…I cannot take action until it is adopted. When it is adopted, I will then write the Ministry of Finance on the matter and ask him (the Finance Minister) for a response within the stipulated time.”
Isaacs explained that a number of other matters would have come up during the period November 28, 2016, to the last sitting which took place earlier this month.
In the PAC’s report that was laid in the National Assembly last year, the Parliamentary Sub-committee expressed concerns regarding a number of irregularities as pointed out by the Auditor General.
One issue that the PAC highlighted in particular was the “dishonest behaviour” of some accounting officers within the system. It is recommending that such elements must be removed.
According to the Committee, the culture where certain officials believe that it is simply acceptable to engage in unbecoming financial practices, must come to an end.
Over the years, the PAC said that it has examined the Auditor General’s report, only to find that the same financial transgressions are being repeated year after year.
To bring an end to this behaviour, the members have since put forward a number of recommendations.
Among its many recommendations, the PAC is calling for the Finance Secretary to be empowered to surcharge defaulting accounting officers. It is also suggesting that Accounting officers and/or engineering staff that knowingly wait until the end of December to sign off on incomplete projects, be removed from the system.
The PAC said that it is against this practice which it considers to be “dishonest and not in keeping with the nation’s financial rules and regulations.”
Additionally, the Committee said that over the years, there have been a number of challenges regarding Budget Agencies.
The Committee observed that across budget agencies, Accounting Officers and/or engineering staff appear to persistently sign off on incomplete projects. It said that Accounting Officers were found, in many instances, not implementing appropriate measures to avoid the recurrence of overpayment.
Compounding the situation is the fact that Government Agencies seemed reluctant to use the performance-based gratuity (specifically the withholding of increments) of Accounting Officers as a means of promoting efficiency.
Additionally, the Committee said that the recycling of Accounting Officers who had been cited for inefficiency from one agency to another remains an irritant.
The PAC said that it has also observed that in numerous cases, Performance Bonds and Insurance were seldom utilized as surety by Ministries/Regions against shoddy and incomplete work done by contractors.
In this regard as well, it found that there is a lack of clearly defined policies as it relates to invoking the Insurance and Performance bonds at the appropriate time.
The PAC noted, too, that Log Books not being properly maintained continues to be a perennial problem across Ministries/Departments/Regions.
Furthermore, the PAC has found that the Auditor General’s Engineering Department appears overstretched, given the number of expected interventions and the increase in capital works across agencies.
The PAC said that another frustrating challenge is the fact that Accounting Officers when challenged regarding the comments in the Auditor General’s reports for signing off on incomplete projects, are in the habit of behaving as though the contractors are automatically and legally liable for rectifying the defects.
The Committee said that a significant number of issues appearing before it are as a result of failure to put in place appropriate or timely policies and/or remedies. One such example it cited, was the unclear arrangements for the writing-off of losses, which keeps recurring as queries annually.
The PAC also expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that budget agencies are taking on the average, one year (minimal), to rectify queries highlighted in the Auditor General’s Report. It stressed that in no uncertain terms, changes have to be made in this regard.
While the Public Accounts Committee has delivered on its report for the years 2010 and 2011, it is still way behind. In fact, it is still to issue reports on the Auditor General’s findings for the years 2012 to 2015.
The last Treasury Memorandum was issued in 2013 on the PAC’s report for the year 2009.

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