Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment has a 35 per cent staff short­age which has se­vere­ly re­duced its work and its 2022 re­port high­light­ed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, some of which are fair­ly sub­stan­tial, while two oth­er mat­ters are at the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee lev­el and in court.

This in­for­ma­tion was giv­en yes­ter­day by as­sis­tant Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Shi­va Sinanan when mem­bers of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) head­ed by Oropouche West MP Dave Tan­coo.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from Tan­coo about staffing lev­els, Sinanan said there is a 35 per cent va­can­cy lev­el, trans­lat­ing to about 80 au­di­tors.

“We’re cur­rent­ly li­ais­ing with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DPA) to get these va­can­cies filled. We’ve got­ten, over the last two years, some va­can­cies filled in the pro­fes­sion­al and low­er lev­els, so we’re work­ing on it, but this is a prob­lem we’ve been fac­ing for quite a long time.

“The ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex is quite okay but the va­can­cies sit­u­a­tion is re­al­ly crit­i­cal that we need to ad­dress and it’s be­ing ad­dressed as we’ve got­ten sup­port from the Fi­nance Min­istry to fill va­can­cies at the pro­fes­sion­al/tech­ni­cal lev­els over the past two years.”

Sinanan said the va­can­cies are at the low­er and tech­ni­cal lev­els in the au­dit­ing stream and at least nine pro­fes­sion­al lev­el va­can­cies have been filled. He said low­er lev­el staff is much less than in pre­vi­ous years

He said the staff short­ages have had an ef­fect on the De­part­ment’s work as “at least 30 per cent of the work we could have done, couldn’t have been done in the last year. In terms of the scope of work, ar­eas we want­ed to look at, it was se­vere­ly re­duced.”

Sinanan agreed with Tan­coo that va­can­cies for 80 au­di­tors are sub­stan­tial as the Di­vi­sion has to plan in ad­vance to do au­dits.

“Every­body’s es­sen­tial to get a job done . . . so when we have one or two peo­ple miss­ing it re­al­ly af­fects plan­ning.”

He said the 35 per cent va­can­cy lev­el is rel­a­tive­ly new as there were 30 ap­point­ments at the low­est lev­els over the past two years and peo­ple had al­so re­tired. Con­tract em­ploy­ment is done once there’s fund­ing.

The Di­vi­sion has been li­ais­ing with the Fi­nance Min­istry and the DPA on in­ter­views for low­er lev­el posts which are hired through the ser­vice com­mis­sions.

Sinanan said the staff does what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to get the job done to de­liv­er Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports on time, in­clud­ing hav­ing high­er lev­el staff per­form low­er lev­el func­tions. Tan­coo and oth­er PAC mem­bers com­mend­ed the De­part­ment for do­ing a lot of work de­spite the con­straints.

PAC mem­ber Jear­lean John asked about cy­ber­at­tacks and steps tak­en to en­sure da­ta ac­cu­ra­cy. Sinanan said the de­part­ment has an In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) sec­tion staffed by peo­ple who are qual­i­fied in IT au­dit­ing.

“They’ve checked sev­er­al sys­tems in the pub­lic ser­vice be­fore and com­ment­ed on them and they are qual­i­fied to de­ter­mine if the sys­tem was hacked,” he said.

Sinanan agreed that the In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tem (IFMS) at the Trea­sury, which is sup­posed to net­work across min­istries, would help im­prove the De­part­ment’s work. It was due to be­gin in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year but was on­ly im­ple­ment­ed in two min­istries. PAC mem­ber Ayana Web­ster-Roy was shocked at that rev­e­la­tion.

Sinanan said the IFMS is a func­tion of the Trea­sury and his De­part­ment plans to ex­am­ine it once it be­gins. How­ev­er, “push­ing” the project is a func­tion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts.

“We’d be al­most out of line to in­sist they im­ple­ment it,” he said.

Tan­coo urged the De­part­ment to be more ag­gres­sive with the di­vi­sions to get the IFMS go­ing.

Re­port cap­tures ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties

PAC mem­ber Adri­an Leonce asked about fraud, il­le­gal acts and cor­rup­tion in the 2022 au­dit. Sinanan said the De­part­ment re­ferred to such is­sues as “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties”.

“The 2022 re­port cap­tures ar­eas of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, some of them fair­ly sub­stan­tial. Across the board, in most min­istries it’s not that preva­lent. There are is­sues but some­times we can­not pur­sue this since the doc­u­ments aren’t pro­vid­ed, con­tracts not seen,” he ex­plained.

“But that’s as far as we can go on dis­claimers of opin­ion. We can­not say as the doc­u­ments aren’t pro­vid­ed. But to say it’s a clean slate, I don’t think I brought that im­pres­sion.”

Sinanan said when an ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty is found, the De­part­ment takes it to high­er au­thor­i­ties.

“We don’t pur­sue it. With ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties we hand the doc­u­ments over to the Fraud Squad and let them deal with it. If we went ahead we’d be out of line. We au­dit and say what is found, what’s right or wrong.”

“Gen­er­al­ly we’ve found no ma­jor is­sues of fraud. The press would have picked up maybe three is­sues with in­ci­dents in the pub­lic do­main which we wouldn’t com­ment on.

“Two of them are be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee and the courts right now. One was tried and found guilty.”