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Life benefits of Guyanese staff at Suriname Embassy in jeopardy-AG finds
Kaieteur News – The benefits- health and otherwise- due to Guyanese staffers employed at the Guyana Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname are in jeopardy as a result of the manner in which insurance and other payments are made, a situation flagged by Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, in his most recent report on government accounts.
The Guyanese Embassy located in Paramaribo, Suriname
In his report for the period concluding December 31, 2020, Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, found that the Embassy ceased deductions from salaries for employees’ pension and medical insurance contributions from May 2020, due to changes in Paramaribo’s banking system.
As a result, employees commenced providing their contributions in cash to the Embassy.
The Embassy pays over the pension contributions monthly to the relevant agencies.
It was found, however, that the medical insurance contributions are kept by the Embassy for six months then paid over to the relevant agency, since, the insurance company requested payments bi-annually.
As such, the Auditor General concluded that, “this situation poses a security risk whereby, the Embassy has to secure the cash for one to six months, before making the payments. Further, should employees renege to pay over their contributions to the Embassy on time, complications could arise, which include benefits from the pension and medical schemes.”
It was noted that the Head of Budget Agency explained that the agencies have since provided banking information which allows for the direct transfer of these contributions. In addition, the Embassy has reverted to deducting the contributions from the employees’ gross salary and payments are made using the online banking platform.
Compounding the situation, the AG in his report found too, that in addition to the questionable financial transactions made by the Embassy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—with responsibility for that Embassy–continued to breach Section 43 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act 2003. This is so, since the law requires all unexpended balance of public moneys out of the Consolidated Fund to be returned to the Fund at the end of each fiscal year.
The Auditor General noted too, that this obtains since unspent balances from the 2020 allocations totalling $39.064M from twenty Embassies/Missions were paid over to the Consolidated Fund during the period January to March, 2021.
As a result, he said the Appropriation Account of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Programme II, Foreign Policy Promotion, was overstated by $39.064M. Similarly, balances from the 2020 allocations amounting to $54.759M were paid to the Consolidated Fund during the period January to March 2020. It was noted that the balance which had to be paid over in 2021, contrary to the FMA, was in relation to 20 overseas missions with the biggest defaulters being the Surinamese, Cuban and Canadian Embassies.
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