Auditor General requested to further probe D’Urban Park, other contracts – PAC Chairman

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has requested further probing be done by the Auditor General (AG), Deodat Sharma, into specific projects.

Among those projects is the D’Urban Park Project, for which the AG in his 2015 report listed some $36.5 million in Lotto funds being used for rehabilitative works.

This is according to PAC Chairman Irfaan Ali, during a recent interview with Guyana Times. Ali stated that these requests were in relation to follow-ups from the findings that had been included in the AG’s 2015 Report.

“The Auditor General would look at every aspect of Government accounting and expenditure, and his office would provide important information for various expenditures. So, most of the issues that are raised fall (within the purview of) the Auditor General 2015 Report,” he said. “But we know that at the PAC, we have discussed a number of entities and areas where the Auditor General would have been asked to do further work or complete specific audits. D’Urban Park, for example; the Mayor and City Council; various aspects of the region administration; the Ministry of Public Infrastructure are some of the areas the Auditor General would be looking at.”

“It’s basically follow-ups to their responses from the last report. And in certain grey areas where the PAC would need additional information or where additional work could be done.”

 D’Urban Park

In his 2015 report, the Auditor General had said that following checks on the accounts, it was found that while Government transferred $1 billion of the Lotto money to the Consolidated Fund in 2015, it held onto just over half a billion dollars to remain under the control of the Ministry of the Presidency and it spent $305 million on various activities.

According to a breakdown of the expenditure provided by the Auditor General, $36.5 million went towards the rehabilitation of D’Urban Park; $63.7 million went towards Mashramani celebrations; while another $51.5 million was utilised for ‘music’.

Other activities funded by the Ministry of the Presidency using the Lotto proceeds related to Emancipation and Amerindian Heritage celebrations among others.

The Auditor General did observe in his 2015 audit that “cash book and payment vouchers for 2015 to verify the details of the amounts spent were not presented for audit and the Deputy Accountant General explained that these were with the Forensic Auditor and had not been returned up to the time of the audit”.

Monies from the Lotto Fund being held by the President’s office was for years a sore point for the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance For Change when in the Opposition, since they were always adamant that all of the earnings constituted revenues of the State and should all be deposited into the treasury to be spent with parliamentary approval. It was pointed out by Auditor General Sharma that while the Finance Ministry has budgeted for lottery receipts, expenditures continued to be met without parliamentary approval.

Sharma has since expressed his opinion that in this regard, spending utilising the proceeds of the national lottery should be accounted for by having a Supplementary Estimate passed in the National Assembly and recorded in the Public Accounts.

M&CC

On February 28, 2017, Town Clerk Royston King wrote to the Auditor General’s Office requesting an audit of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC). That request was taken up and according to Sharma, the audit would be two-fold, with a focus on stock and financials.

There have been persistent calls for City Hall to be fully audited. Back in 2015, the M&CC had received two grants under the Communities Ministry’s Capital Programme for the “Georgetown Restoration Programme”, in addition to the “Emergency Solid Waste Management of Haags Bosch Sanitary Landfill”.

Each multimillion-dollar grant was based on Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) between the Communities Ministry’s Permanent Secretary and the capital city’s Town Clerk.

According to the Auditor General’s Report, there were several “discrepancies” in the way the allotted monies to the City Council were spent during the year. According to reports, after examining 212 payment vouchers, a number of discrepancies were found, including hundreds of instances where there was no evidence of the payment vouchers being certified by the accountant or another authorised officer.