State auditors question Education Ministry’s textbook policy

Nov 29, 2018 News

State auditors have raised questions about the Ministry of Education’s textbook policy after a special report found a number of worrying things.
The report – “Compliance Audit Report – Procurement of Textbooks by the Ministry of Education”- said that from investigations, the suitability and context of textbooks purchased could not be determined.

The Auditor General has unearthed what appears to be a racket in the procurement of textbooks at the Ministry of Education.

The report was recently tabled by the Ministry of Finance in the National Assembly.
With regards to the appropriate nature of the current textbooks, the report by the Audit Office of Guyana said that “Documentation, including minutes of relevant committee meetings were not received for audit. As a result, we were unable to determine how many meetings were held and what, if any, decisions were made with regards to the acquisition of textbooks.”
According to the report, this is in contravention to the Book Policy of the Ministry, which states that a Textbook Evaluation Committee and an Education System Committee should be maintained to determine the suitability of texts and seek additional information about the context of textbooks.
There have been complaints also that with the changing nature of the work environment, there must be changes to the curriculum in schools. Going hand-in-hand with this is the question of learning materials including textbooks.
The report recommended that the Ministry must comply with the Book Policy 2007.
In the conclusion, the Audit Office said that the Ministry did not comply in all material respects with the relevant acts, regulations and policies governing procurement of textbooks during the financial year 2016.
The context of the textbooks would be important as it appears from the report that the Ministry in 2016 was ordering textbooks in an ad-hoc manner.
Not only were contracts asked for were not produced by the Ministry to the auditors, but of the $500M allocated for textbooks acquisition in 2016, more than $200M in payments could not be verified.
The fact that weaknesses in the book procurement was discovered from transactions in 2016, a mere year after the Coalition Government entered office, would be a hard blow to their campaign promises, which included a no-nonsense stance on corruption.
According to the report, auditors could not determine whether the Ministry received textbooks valued $91.6M–approximately 26 percent of the total textbooks paid for in 2016. The various registers to record the textbooks received were not updated regularly.
It got worse. The correctness and accuracy of payments totaling $247M, which is more than two-thirds (70 percent) of the total payments, could not be verified.
During that year, through the annual budget, the Ministry was allocated $506M, with $14M set aside for Nursery; $181M for Primary and $310M for secondary schools, for the procurement of textbooks.
The Audit Office disclosed that the Ministry never conducted a comprehensive review of the procurement of textbooks, and consequently, deficiencies affecting such procurement could occur unnoticed. There were instances also that suppliers were paid more for each book after the contract was inked – in one case more than double the original price.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News