Dangerous signs!

Sep 05, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport does NOT have any overarching responsibility to ensure that public funds are spent by social organisations according to the intended objective. The Ministry has a general responsibility to ensure that the funds which it disburses as subventions or donations to subsidiary organisations are spent in accordance with any specified conditions, but this does not imply an overarching responsibility.

The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport should indicate whether, in allocating the massive sum of $100M in 2022 to the International Decade of People of African Descent Assembly-Guyana (IDPADA-G), it dictated the purposes to which the monies were to be put. If the Ministry did not do so, then the most it can do is to ask the organisation to show how it spent the sums which were allocated and to show proof of this but it cannot demand all the financial records of that entity since this constitutes overreach and interference, and would be outside of the Ministry’s authority.

The monies received by IDPADA-G from the State were substantial. It is reported that almost half of a billion dollars was allocated to the organisation since 2018. No other social organisation in Guyana has ever received such substantial assistance. Logically, therefore, the government may be concerned as to how this money was spent. But a concern as to how it was spent does not translate to a right to demand to know how it was spent.

The IDPADA-G therefore should carefully consider its obligations to furnish financial documents to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport. In doing so, IDPADA-G should take account of whether the Ministry set conditions as to how the public funds it received were to be spent. If the sums were given to be spent as the IDPADA-G deems fit or if no purposes were specifically set, then the organisation has no obligation to submit its financial records to the Ministry but may be required to do so under the specific laws under which the organisation was either established or incorporated.

The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport must produce the relevant correspondence indicating the purposes for which it approved the disbursement of funds. If it did not specify the purposes of the public funds provided, then any demand for records can only be made if there is a fraud investigation. And this demand would have to come from the police.

If the Ministry has issues with the uses to which the funds were put, it always has the option of halting future disbursements. A former PPP/C government had many years halted the subventions, which were previously granted to the Critchlow Labour College.

This demand from the Ministry to examine the financial records of the IDPADA-G is disturbing for a number of reasons. For one, the government has not indicated that it gave subventions to the organisation for specific purposes. Nor has it established a prima facie case that the organisation has been abusing the use of public funds or has been engaged in fraud. Nor has the government established the legal basis for demanding the financial records of the organisation.

Guyanese will recall the various pretexts, which the PPP/C government had used in the past to hound the Guyana Cricket Board. The government even took Court action to seize the financial records of the cricketing organisation. It has never publicised whether it found any fraud. But the government got its way.

Social organisations must have the freedom to operate as they see fit, to set their own objectives without political or other interference. As far as possible, governments should not get involved in the work of social organisations. The government reportedly has conducted a financial audit of the organisation. But an audit is simply one which establishes that the financial statements reflect the financial state of the organisation at a specific point in time. A financial audit does not generally determine whether the funds were put to the best uses. But it could establish whether any part of the finances was not used for the purposes specified as per any agreement with the government or any other donor.

In response to the government’s request for its financial records, the IDPADA-G has referred the government to the audit conducted by the Ministry of Finance. What the organisation should have done is to demand the source of the Ministry’s authority for requesting the financial records. Until and unless the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport can produce the lawful authority under which it assumes to have overarching responsibility to investigate how public funds to the organisation were spent, it will find itself accused of interfering in the work of the IDPADA-G.

 

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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