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Overpayment for contracts…PAC repeats call for better supervision of regional engineers
Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Irfaan Ali, has once again called on the Regional Administrations to pay closer attention to the operations of engineers under its watch.
PAC Chairman Irfaan Ali
The issue came up as the Region Four Administration was called to explain its accounts before the PAC yesterday.
During the meeting, Regional Executive Officer, (REO) Pauline Lucas, was asked to give an explanation on the number of items listed in the Auditor General (AG)’s report.
Questions were raised about an overpayment of $3.693M discovered on the contract for community ground enhancement project in Tucville, Georgetown.
The works were done on behalf of the Department of Culture.
There was a change of scope of work that was necessary according to the Department of Culture but this was not communicated to the administration prior to the execution of the changes.
The administration is currently in the process of verifying these works.
Neither the REO nor the engineer present at the meeting could respond to the questions posed by the PAC representatives.
Instead, the explanation proffered by the Regional Administration to question was that the matter was dealt by an engineer who is no longer employed by the Region Four Administration — the engineer has since been transferred to Region Six.
Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Communities, Emile McGarrell, explained further that the issue of overpayment stemmed from the fact that the engineer had just returned from a scholarship programme and lacked the kind of experience to handle the matter properly.
However, Ali noted that tremendous issues are coming out of the regional administrations in relation to the engineering officers.
He called on the REO to ensure that there is proper supervision of the engineers.
Last April, at a meeting of the PAC, it was noted that the accounting officers were not implementing measures to avoid the recurrence of overpayment in its entirety.
The PAC said that accounting officers and engineering staff appear to persistently sign off on incomplete projects.
It noted that this is not a matter that affects one budget agency, but all.
The issue of overpayment was even noted by Auditor General Deodat Sharma in his latest report. He viewed it is a matter of “grave concern.”
The PAC made this and other statements in its latest report, which was recently handed over to the National Assembly by Chairman and Opposition Member, Irfaan Ali.
In his 2016 report, the Auditor General said that overpayments amounting to $82.658M were made on measured works on 98 contracts administered by Ministries, Departments and Regions.
Sharma said that, included in the sum of $65.076M owed to the administrations, were overpayments amounting to $45.265M. Most of these occurred in Regions One, Eight and Nine.
Included in the sum of $17.582M overpaid on contracts in Ministries/Departments were amounts totalling $11.989M and $3.467M or approximately 68 and 19 percent for the Ministries of Public Security and Public Infrastructure, respectively.
Additionally, the PAC found that performance bonds and insurance were seldomly utilized as surety by the Government agencies against substandard and incomplete work done by contractors. Accounting officers were also found to be continually having stale-dated cheques in their possessions.
Overall, the PAC had expressed disappointment that accounting officers were not adhering to the recommendations by the Committee to address repetitive challenges.
Furthermore, the Committee believes that the culture where certain officials believe that it is simply acceptable to engage in unbecoming financial practices must come to an end.
PAC Chairman Ali has said that it is disheartening to examine the Auditor General’s report, which shows the same financial transgressions are being repeated year after year.
To bring an end to this behaviour, he and his fellow committee members have since put forward a number of recommendations.
Among them, 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.
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