Statement By Leader of the Opposition on Meeting with Director of Audit
On Friday, June 23, 2017, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (“PAC”), I met with the Director of Audit Ms Dahalia Sealey and her deputy Joan Browne at the Audit Office. The Honourable Arnhim Eustace as former PAC chairman accompanied me.
At the meeting, I expressed my grave concern that the annual audit and report of the Director of Audit on the Public Accounts of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are several years overdue.
I noted that the Director of Audit is required to audit and report on the public accounts of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines at least once every year.
However, that the most recent reports prepared by the Director of Audit and laid in Parliament were for the years 2009 and 2010.
No reports for the years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 have been prepared and presented to Parliament.
The Director cited scarcity of resources including lack of enough trained personnel to do the job constitutionally required of the Director of Audit and the Audit Office.
The Director said that for years she has been asking for resources– mainly training for personnel– to enable her to audit statutory bodies, which is part of her mandate.
The Director of Audit indicated that for she has not received the needed resources and consequently has not been able to perform her duty to audit and report on statutory bodies.
In our meeting, the Director of Audit acknowledged that as the Argyle Airport project and the IADC received funds appropriated by Parliament and disbursed, she has a responsibility to audit the project to determine how the money was spent.
She noted however that her office would have to hire technical experts from fields other than accounting and auditing to do a proper audit of the project and that her office lacked the resources to do so.
Consequently, no audit of the project has been done by her office since the project started.
I also drew to the Director’s attention my dissatisfaction over the way the funds of the PetroCaribe loan program have been handled by the government over the years in that no legal authority for the operation of a PetroCaribe fund existed until one was established by Parliament in 2016.
She acknowledged that the Director of Audit is under the Act establishing the fund directly responsible for auditing the Fund but because of insufficient resources, she was unable to say when an audit of the PetroCaribe Development Fund would be done.
This is just unacceptable! I call on the government and in particular the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to provide the resources to the Director of Audit to perform her duties.
There are other entities that must be given attention for audits by the Director of Audit, including National Properties.
If the Director of Audit cannot yet complete the audit and report of the account of the government for 2011 to 2016 or audit statutory bodies because it lacks the necessary resources, how can it fulfil its role? Starving the Director of Audit of trained personnel and other resources undermines governmental accountability.
The failure to remedy the situation after many years of pleading for funds by the Director of Audit leads to only one conclusion: that is, the government does not care about accountability.
This leads inescapably to the question: are they hiding something and if so, what are they hiding?