BIT wants Administrator to repay embezzled funds

Oct 10, 2018 News

The Board of Industrial Training (BIT) is looking to recover millions of dollars that has reportedly been embezzled by officials of the Upper Corentyne Industrial Training Centre (UCITC).
This newspaper is in possession of a letter that BIT sent to UCIT C’s Administrator, Azad Sugrim, after a recent audit which proved that millions of dollars went unaccounted for.
Earlier this year, the audit was requested by the Chairman and the Board of Directors of BIT, Clinton Williams. The Audit was conducted by the office of the Auditor General.
BIT, in its letter, said that the audit “resulted from the culmination of allegations of financial mismanagement and misuse of the BIT’s funds made against of the Administration of the UCITC.”
The letter continued, “As a consequence of these allegations, a forensic audit was conducted by the Audit Office of Guyana and the findings are very troubling and a cause for grave concern. Among the findings cited in the Audit, is the non-use of monies that BIT would have paid to the UCITC for the delivery of the BIT’s programmes at that institution.”
The letter said that in some instances, it was found that the BIT funds were never fully utilized “to finance certain aspects of our programmes.
BIT said, “It is our opinion that the UCITC is obligated to reimburse the BIT for the monies which it never spent on our training programmes.”
BIT forwarded a copy of the audit and demanded a response.
One of the damning findings of the audit was that, on many occasions, UCITC collected monies from BIT but did not put the money towards the use for which it was requested. Kaieteur News understands that this has been going on for years.
Specifically, it has been found that Sugrim inflated the cost of the electricity bills for the institution which is funded by Government.
The Audit found that UCTIC collected the money to buy various materials and equipment but would then use material provided by the Ministry. The money collected to buy those equipment and materials remain unaccounted for.
Also, UCTIC was caught inflating bills. In just one instance, UCTIC could not have accounted for over $7M.
An audit report stated, “The Training centre only submitted pay sheets, bills and receipts amounting to $1.4M resulting in an unaccounted difference of $7.136M.”
Further, the Audit Office noted that the proposal which UCTIC submitted to BIT included a sum of $1.501M for electricity charges based on a calculation that the training centre consumes $5M of electricity per month.
However, an examination of the electricity bills for the years 2012-2014 by the Audit Office revealed that the average monthly consumption of the training centre was $449,270, that is, a difference of $1.052M per month.
The Audit Office reported that using that training school’s principle for calculation of electricity charges, the amount that should have been requested was $150,120, “based on the average monthly consumption, an over-estimation of $1.35M.”
An official from BIT told Kaieteur News, “We are not just letting it down, something has to happen.”
The official, who spoke on the grounds of anonymity, said, “There are several issues here. You have to notice, also, that they are not only robbing us, they are also saying that they are paying $5M per month for electricity, which means that that is the amount in the budget they submit to the Ministry. So they are basically getting two sweet out of one.”
Sugrim remains on the job.

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