Public Accounts Committee meets and produces

Jul 15, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) finally met, a small miracle by itself. Immediately it came up with a nugget: an agency shortfall involving well over a billion in taxpayers’ monies during the APNU+AFC Coalition running the country.

Though the reason may sound harmless, viz., the obstacles separating a village community and a leading secondary school, the end result was that a project did not get moving, and funds had to be rechanneled. All of this came up in the long delayed, long pending restart of PAC meetings. It goes without saying that the business of Guyanese was held hostage to the usual political tangles. When the business at hand is about how taxpayers’ money was spent, and how cleanly, then the numerous PAC holdups also held Guyanese to ransom about what their elected governments do in their time, and with the people’s money.

Run any kind of business a certain way, and before one can blink, it goes into the gutter. This was what went on with the business of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Guyana’s parliament. It is about how so much has gone wrong, and so much is preferred to stay safely under the carpet. Not to meet once is human. Not to meet a second or even a third time in succession may be excusable, depending on the circumstances. But not to meet for the number of times in the unbroken string that it did not, and for the same slippery and specious reason, is an insult to the Guyanese people, and should be made a crime.

Due to the continuing absence of PAC members from the Government side of the benches, the parliamentary PAC had been paralyzed, doing nothing. There were only the ongoing laments of disappointment over the seemingly nonchalant manner in which attendance at these meetings was being treated. Guyanese are more than insulted by what has happened, their trust has been violated. As soon as the PAC did meet, the revelations came about what got stuck, didn’t move.

Undoubtedly, time is tight, and Government ministers are locked in a struggle with competing schedules and many conflicts and bottlenecks prevalent. But when the PAC does not meet, then there is little to no awareness, then the corruptions and gaps that often cannot be explained only multiply under the cover of convenient conflicts and constraints. The PAC must meet regularly. Both the government and opposition owe that to Guyanese. The crucial PAC not meeting gives incompetence and possible corruption too many free passes. The PAC meeting and getting on with the sensitive job that falls under its hand is not a favor done for Guyanese, it is a duty, a compulsory one. Sadly, the record has been the opposite.

The current chair of the PAC, Opposition member Jermaine Figueira had raised his concerns in public about the lack of a quorum on so many occasions that he now sounds like a stuck CD. He has not gone so far as to allege outright sabotage of the PAC by the PPP/C Government members, but there could have been no misinterpreting his sharp words and frozen positions. A little while back, he had taken matters to a higher rung on the ladder, when he called for the resignation of two key Government PAC members. This verbalizing of his frustrations, however, did seem to yield some movement, in that the PAC met in session, and its work produced fruits about what went wrong, and who was responsible. We can only imagine how much more is waiting to make it to the light, which is what makes the PAC meeting on a consistent basis even more mandatory. Guyanese have a right to know how their budgeted dollars have been spent.

The PAC has its place, and it is one that reviews what has been examined with recommendations made up the chain. Its utility to the public should not be questioned, neither should it be lost through lack of quorum over a stretch of time. If there is to be suspect accounting to citizens, then let it not be so blatantly, so disrespectfully. The PAC must meet, as scheduled, so that the record of failures and malfeasances are known.

APNU+AFC, billion, Coalition, Government, Public Accounts Committee (PAC)

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