AG flags Region Four Admin for overpayment to ex-staff

Dec 24, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – In the 2020 report, Auditor General (AG) Deodat Sharma, highlighted a recurring issue that resulted in the overpayment to public servants by the regional administration in Region Four.

Regional administrative office for Region Four.

According to the AG report, the issue related to public servants who left the job but their names were still in the system as employees. Hence, salaries were still being allotted to them. In some cases, the overpayment for 2020 resulted from the late submission of documentation for teachers who resigned or were dismissed. The report pointed out that under Region Four, some sixteen leavers of which thirteen were teachers and three were public officers were being paid even though they no longer worked for the government.
The document noted that the audit examination of the relevant personal files and pay sheets, as it relates to teachers, revealed that it took an average of fourteen days for the resignation to be processed from the Head Master/Mistress to the accounting unit.
Further, the report noted that ten persons were overpaid salaries amounting to $1.245M inclusive of the related deductions totalling $261,622 overpaid to various deduction agencies.
Similarly, the audit pointed to amounts totalling $2.556M which remained outstanding as overpaid net salaries to employees with respect to 2015 to 2017 and 2019. As a result, the report noted that a sum totalling $341,000 paid over to the various agencies were also not recovered. Despite the slow progression in recovering the overpaid sums, the Regional administration indicated in the audit report that it will continue to make all efforts to recover overpayment for the prior and current year.
The audit office therefore recommended that the Regional Administration follow-up this matter with the view of recovering the overpayments and ensure that pay change directives are communicated in a timely manner to the Regional Accounting Unit.
In recent years, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been raising questions about overpayments, not only to contractors, but also to staffers within the state ministries and agencies.
In many cases, the contractors were paid and the works signed off. However, checks by state auditors found that various aspects of the job were incomplete and therefore the contractor would have been overpaid.