SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark claims the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) has not sub­mit­ted its books for au­dit for the past 12 years.

Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage of de­bate on the Firearms (Amend­ment) Bill in the Sen­ate ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, Mark raised an ob­jec­tion to Clause 6 of the Bill which would give au­thor­i­ty to the SSA di­rec­tor to al­low em­ploy­ees to use State-is­sued firearms while car­ry­ing out their du­ties.

“We be­lieve this is not the mo­ment or the time for the SSA and its di­rec­tor to be in­vest­ed with this pow­er to give arms, grant firearms to the 350 work­ers,” Mark said.

He said the SSA had failed to present their ac­counts for au­dit and there was lit­tle to no over­sight of how the agency spends State funds.

“I do not know if the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter is aware that the SSA has re­fused to be au­dit­ed by their fail­ure to sub­mit their state­ments to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al since 2009. We are talk­ing about close to 13 years the SSA has spent over $2.5 bil­lion with­out any sense of ac­count­abil­i­ty,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to Mark, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said it was not true that there was no over­sight at the SSA. Ar­mour said the SSA com­prised sec­ond­ed po­lice of­fi­cers who re­main un­der the purview of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

“It would be an un­der­state­ment of the re­al­i­ty to sug­gest there is no over­sight be­cause Par­lia­ment has over­sight through an an­nu­al re­port,” Ar­mour added.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds al­so re­spond­ed to Mark’s ob­jec­tions, say­ing he had been told the SSA is will­ing to be au­dit­ed.

“I have had con­fir­ma­tion from the SSA a mo­ment ago to sug­gest it is not cor­rect to say they have re­fused to have their ac­counts au­dit­ed. In fact, the SSA is in a po­si­tion now as we speak to pro­duce sev­er­al let­ters to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­quest­ing their en­gage­ment with the SSA,” Hinds said.

But Mark was not de­terred. He said he has ev­i­dence that Hinds was be­ing mis­led by the SSA.

“I have a let­ter signed by Lorel­ly Pu­jadas, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, to­day’s date. This la­dy is say­ing in the last para­graph that the SSA has not sub­mit­ted, ac­cord­ing to law, to her of­fice any fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year 2011 to 2021, it’s here,” Mark said, hold­ing a copy of the let­ter aloft.

Mark was asked by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas whether he would be will­ing to share a copy of the let­ter with Hinds, who asked to see it. Mark promised to cir­cu­late copies to all mem­bers.

When the clause was even­tu­al­ly put to a vote, Mark’s amend­ment to re­move the clause en­tire­ly did not get the ma­jor­i­ty vote and it re­mained part of the Bill.