PAC looking to boost powers; moves to Parliament to legally summon witnesses

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is tasked with examining Auditor General reports on public finance but has long grappled with various witnesses not showing up to the hot seat, is expected to soon be able to legally compel witnesses to come before it.
PAC Chairman and Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) Jermaine Figueira, will be moving a motion during today’s 83rd sitting of the National Assembly that will seek to empower PAC as a legislative body as defined by the Legislative Bodies (Evidence) Act.
Currently, the PAC does not have this designation and therefore cannot summon persons to appear before the committee. What the PAC has been doing is writing to witnesses requesting their presence, with the assistance of the Parliamentary Office in reaching out to these persons.
The motion states that “WHEREAS, the Committee for the purpose of examining the Accounts of entities, is required to invite persons to produce books, plans, or documents, to aid in the work of the Committee; AND WHEREAS on occasions, some persons are reluctant to appear before the Committee, thus affecting the work of the Committee; AND WHEREAS the Public Accounts Committee is desirous of summoning persons to appear before the Committee to explain the use of Public Funds during their tenure.”

“BE IT RESOLVED: That the Public Accounts Committee be deemed a legislative body, as defined in the Legislative Bodies (Evidence) Act, Chapter 2 of 2012, with the power to summon persons to appear before the Committee, to produce books, plans, or documents, to aid in the work of the Committee.”
When contacted, Figueira was confident that the motion would receive bipartisan support today in the National Assembly since both sides of the PAC have already acknowledged the need for the committee to be able to summon witnesses, as well as the current deficiencies where it concerns PAC’s status under the Legislative Bodies (Evidence) Act.
“It was discussed to great extent within the public accounts committee. We had the buy in of both government and opposition. So, it was agreed upon to send it to the house. The PAC, collectively, accepted that there is need for that and agreed for us to put such a motion in.”
“Actually, it was one of the government members, Sanjeev Datadin, who brought it to our attention that the PAC essentially doesn’t have the summoning powers. And having that brought to our attention, we sought the advice of the Clerk, since there were different views on the interpretation.”
Figueira noted that the advice of Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC., were also sought on the matter. According to the Chairman, it is thus from these bipartisan efforts that the motion was birthed.

Reports
Figueira will also be moving another motion today, this time for the PAC’s report on the examination of the 2017 and 2018 Auditor General reports, to be adopted by the National Assembly.
These two reports had been merged in 2021 and examined the next year, as a result of the backlog of several years the PAC is currently in. In fact, the committee is currently examining AG reports from the year 2019.
In his 2019 report, the Auditor General had flagged some cases in Region Five where payment vouchers had mismatched bill and requisition dates. In others, $22.7 million worth of bills were not cancelled after being paid, a situation that would result in duplicate payments. Another finding that was examined last year by the PAC, was that the sum of $115.9 million was still unreconciled on the books of the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC).
In February of this year, officials from the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) of Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) had been grilled by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as to why $131 million worth of cheques were cut and kept on hand, despite the work that was earmarked to be done and paid for not being carried out. This too had been flagged in the 2019 report.
During a PAC sitting in April, confusion regarding what happened to $111.5 million that was supposed to go towards procuring drugs in Region Two (Pomeroon/Supenaam), prompted calls from the committee for a special investigation into drug procurement in other regions as well.
The Ministry of Health would again make headlines during a PAC sitting last month, when the PAC probed why as much as $306 Million worth of outstanding health supplies were paid for between 2015 and 2017, but millions of dollars in goods were not delivered. (G3)