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Education Ministry loses $$ millions in overpayment to staff— AG report

Nov 08, 2018 News

Each year, millions of dollars are expended on the payment of staff attached to each Ministry and Government agency.
And in some cases, Government employees are overpaid by millions of dollars. This situation was highlighted in the Auditor General Report of 2017. According to the AG report, the situation has left Government agencies like the Ministry of Education still attempting to recover sums overpaid to staff and teachers.
The document stipulated that under the Ministry of Education, overpayment of net salaries totaled $5M and related deductions totaled over $1.464 M.
According to the report, the sums are still to be recovered from the overpaid parties. In response to queries from the AG, the Education Ministry noted that that notices were placed in the print media for persons overpaid between 2010 -2015 to make contact with the Ministry.
“The last notice was placed in September 2018. The Ministry had also written to the Ministry of Finance seeking to determine whether any of the persons overpaid were still in the employ of the Government, and if so, whether they were entitled to pension/gratuity,” the Education Ministry said in response to the queries.
The Ministry further noted that that steps are still being taken to recover the overpaid salaries and deductions.
The Audit Office has therefore made several recommendations relating to recovering the sums.
The office recommended that the Ministry take stringent action to recover the outstanding sums.
But should all avenues be exhausted, the AG recommended that Ministry should seek the requisite approval to write-off the losses resulting from the overpayment of net salaries and its related deductions.
The Education Ministry had been cited by the Auditor General several years ago for a number of deficiencies, such as failure to recover several millions of dollars in overpaid salaries, bank accounts with overdrafts of millions not being reconciled and overpayments to contractors among others.
According to the report that was recently tabled in the National Assembly by the Speaker of the House, in 2007, a total of 375 pay change directives for resignations, retirements, dismissals and transfers were forwarded late to the Central Accounting Unit of the Ministry, resulting in overpaid net salaries totaling $10.7M and deductions amounting to $4.549M.
Some $6.1M was recovered, leaving $4.6M and the deductions.
It was also pointed out that a similar situation occurred in 2006 and $3.9M as well as an undetermined amount of deductions remains outstanding.
It was also highlighted that the Ministry has still not taken the necessary steps to ensure that cheque orders are carefully monitored and cleared within the stipulated time-frame through the submission of bills, receipts and other supporting documents.
For the year 2007, there were 60 cheque orders totaling $11.4M that were outstanding and this was compounded by an outstanding balance of 52 orders valued at $1.2M for the years 2004 to 2006.
Back then, the Auditor General had pointed out that the Ministry’s old main bank account, which became non-operational in May 1996, was overdrawn by $78.2M as at 31 December, 2007 and the account had not been reconciled.

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