While the fo­cus of the head­lines in re­cent days has been the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty with re­gard to funds dis­trib­uted for COVID-19 re­lief by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the Au­dit Gen­er­al Re­port for 2020 has re­vealed that there have been sev­er­al in­stances of this short­com­ing across min­istries, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and state agen­cies.

In the re­port’s con­clu­sion, this was seen as one of the over­sights in the roll­out of COVID-19 re­lief.

The re­port stat­ed: “It ap­pears that no prop­er mon­i­tor­ing and over­sight was in place for the Min­istries and De­part­ments tasked with the ad­min­is­ter­ing of the COVID-19 ini­tia­tives. Roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were not clear­ly de­fined. Lack of col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er rel­e­vant de­part­ments and de­fi­cien­cies in the in­ter­nal con­trols led to the funds al­lo­cat­ed for COVID-19 ini­tia­tives not be­ing used ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.”

The re­port al­so not­ed that the pan­dem­ic ex­posed the lack of plans in place for such a dis­as­ter, as the re­port con­firmed many of these agen­cies did not have up­dat­ed busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and dis­as­ter re­cov­ery plans.

“This was ev­i­dent when the pan­dem­ic oc­curred and min­istries and de­part­ments were not ful­ly pre­pared to deal with a dis­as­ter of this na­ture,” the re­port said.

The over­sights in ver­i­fi­ca­tion could be seen in some of the key re­lief pro­grammes in­tro­duced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. In­come and food sup­port re­lief grant, as the au­dit not­ed nu­mer­ous fail­ures to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy who had re­ceived pay­ments.

The re­port not­ed that there were 49,433 ap­pli­ca­tions for the food sup­port grant, to­talling $75,632,490 in pay­outs while 47,685 ap­pli­cants for In­come Sup­port with $145,467,750 in pay­outs. $221,100,240 would have been dis­trib­uted for both grants up to Sep­tem­ber 30 when the au­dit was com­plet­ed.

There were dis­trib­uted as fol­lows:

• Au­to­mat­ed Clear­ing House— $109,748,610

• Deb­it Card—$51,353,880

• Cheque—$59,997,750

How­ev­er, the re­port’s analy­sis not­ed: “Due to de­fi­cien­cies in in­put con­trols, 75 ap­pli­cants were reg­is­tered twice. This re­sult­ed in 75 ap­pli­cants re­ceiv­ing two pay­ments each for the Food Sup­port Grant and the In­come Sup­port Grant. As a con­se­quence, dou­ble pay­ments to­talling $330,660 were made.”

It was al­so not­ed that there was an in­stance where an ap­pli­cant re­ceived dou­ble pay­ment for the in­come sup­port grant in the amount of $3,000.

The re­port not­ed that while the cri­te­ria for the pay­ments of these grants was on­ly one pay­ment should be made per house­hold, there were nu­mer­ous dis­crep­an­cies sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise with a sum to­tal of over $3 mil­lion be­ing paid to in­di­vid­u­als who may have ben­e­fit­ed more than once.

“Ev­i­dence was not seen that prop­er checks were made to de­ter­mine whether one pay­ment was made per house­hold. In 325 in­stances for pay­ments of In­come Sup­port Grant and 388 in­stances for the Food Sup­port Grant the same bank ac­count num­ber was used by more than one per­son. Pay­ments to these ap­pli­cants to­talled $2,028,000 for the In­come Sup­port Grant and $1,213,290 for the Food Sup­port Grant. Due to the lack of mon­i­tor­ing by the Min­istry, it could not be de­ter­mined whether these pay­ments were made to bona fide ap­pli­cants,” the re­port not­ed.

The re­port al­so recog­nised six in­stances where bank ac­count num­bers were not en­tered for Au­to­mat­ic Clear­ing House (ACH) pay­ments while there was one ap­pli­cant who re­ceived both grants, but there was no name record­ed.

“This in­com­plete in­for­ma­tion in­di­cates a lack of ver­i­fi­ca­tion of in­put. Due to in­com­plete­ness of the data­base, there was dif­fi­cul­ty in de­ter­min­ing whether the monies were ac­tu­al­ly de­posit­ed in­to the ap­pli­cants’ bank ac­counts,” the re­port said.

One iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card was al­so re­port­ed­ly used for six In­come Sup­port Grant records and 20 food sup­port ap­pli­ca­tions.

“This was ver­i­fied by the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC). Twen­ty-six pay­ments to­talled $48,600 for both grants.

Each per­son has a unique Na­tion­al ID card num­ber and the data­base is sup­posed to in­di­cate up­on in­put if the ID card num­ber was al­ready in the sys­tem,” the re­port not­ed.

The Salary Re­lief Grant ex­pe­ri­enced few­er dis­crep­an­cies, but they not­ed that 18 in­stances were seen where the Em­ploy­ers’ Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Reg­is­tra­tion num­ber was list­ed as ‘0’ or ‘00000’.

Ev­i­dence was not seen that the min­istry ver­i­fied whether these em­ploy­ers were reg­is­tered with NIBTT.

An analy­sis of both the Salary Re­lief Grant data­base and the In­come Sup­port Data­base re­vealed that 2,672 per­sons re­ceived both grants, with a sum to­tal of $8,115,000 paid out to peo­ple able to ben­e­fit from both.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions al­so came out short with re­gard to ac­count­ing for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ham­pers and food cards to those in need.

In its as­sess­ment of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, it was not­ed that pay­ments to­talling $331,150 were made for 2,199 ham­pers/vouch­ers as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020 “to fa­cil­i­tate hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in the form of food vouch­ers, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal vouch­ers, fam­i­ly care pack­ages and child­care gift vouch­ers for all eight elec­toral dis­tricts and the Of­fice of the May­or.”

How­ev­er, the re­port said they on­ly re­ceived list­ings show­ing 680 named per­sons for three out of eight elec­toral dis­tricts.

The re­port not­ed “The list­ings for two dis­tricts did not con­tain par­tic­u­lars of the re­cip­i­ents’ ad­dress or con­tact num­bers. There was no doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence that any of the in­tend­ed re­cip­i­ents signed for or ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived these ham­pers and the do­na­tions from the cor­po­rate cit­i­zens. “

This phrase would ap­pear con­sis­tent­ly through­out the as­sess­ment of the var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in the re­port.

A look at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion would bring about a sim­i­lar query.

The re­port not­ed that the DM­RC spent a to­tal of $300,000 in hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in the form of 1,500 gift cards each val­ued at $200.How­ev­er, dis­tri­b­u­tion lists for 300 gift cards from two out of ten elec­toral dis­tricts were not pro­duced for au­dit.

The re­port states a to­tal of 348 gift cards val­ued at $69,600 were not ac­count­ed for based on the dis­tri­b­u­tion list­ings pro­vid­ed.

In the re­port’s as­sess­ment of with 520 gift cards set aside for four elec­toral dis­tricts, in­con­sis­ten­cies were found. Six­ty-one cards were giv­en with­out any da­ta be­ing sub­mit­ted while there nine in­stances of peo­ple from the same ad­dress or house­hold re­ceiv­ing mul­ti­ple cards. Eleven peo­ple re­ceived cards twice, while 10 times one sig­na­ture was used for mul­ti­ple cards, 35 cards were is­sued un­der such cir­cum­stances.

The re­port not­ed, “there were in­stances with 49 gift cards where batch­es of gift cards were ei­ther signed for by coun­cil­lors, marked off to a De­part­ment or an in­di­vid­ual with no ev­i­dence that any of the in­tend­ed per­sons signed or ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived gift cards.”

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held on Tues­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert high­light­ed some of the mea­sures be­ing un­der­tak­en to pre­vent fraud with re­spect to the grants be­ing of­fered by the gov­ern­ment.

“What I can is that we at Fi­nance, we have very ro­bust, very strict sys­tems in place to iden­ti­fy per­sons who are try­ing to com­mit fraud and dou­ble-dip and so on. And with our lat­est on­line dig­i­tal por­tal even more safe­ty fea­tures are be­ing built in­to that,” Im­bert said.

“So it is very, very dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to cheat in terms of our salary re­lief grant. What I can say is that I have had some very en­cour­ag­ing news from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment where they are al­so im­prov­ing their de­tec­tion mech­a­nisms for per­sons who may be want­i­ng to cheat,” he said.

Im­bert said pre­vi­ous­ly some­one would go to the so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­istry and ap­ply for an In­come Sup­port Grant, pre­tend they do not have a NIS num­ber, pre­tend they did not get a Salary Re­lief Grant from the min­istry of fi­nance.

He ad­mit­ted some of those in­di­vid­u­als “slipped through the crack.”

“This year I am en­cour­aged by what I am hear­ing from the min­istry of so­cial de­vel­op­ment in 2020 some of them slipped through the cracks but this year what I am hear­ing is that they are do­ing much bet­ter,” Im­bert said.

He said for May around 4,800 valid ap­pli­ca­tions were made for the In­come Sup­port Grant.

Im­bert said this was a lit­tle small­er than orig­i­nal­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed be­cause of the con­trols that are in place.

“But we are go­ing to con­tin­ue to look at that. We have col­lab­o­ra­tion, we have com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two min­istries so we will pro­vide them with the list of per­sons we are go­ing to give grants to and they will pro­vide us with the list they are go­ing to give grants to,” Im­bert said.

We will dou­ble-check if the same per­son pops up, the same name the same id card num­ber, the same ad­dress, and so on and that per­son will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be can­celled out,” Im­bert said,

“So I think we are do­ing much bet­ter in terms of fraud­u­lent be­hav­iour, de­tect­ing it and deal­ing with it,” he said.