Why has the disastrous state of accounting for the spending of billions of dollars of public funds been allowed to continue, notwithstanding the decades-long calls by successive auditors general for the establishment of quality accounting systems and rigorous monitoring of spending?
Perhaps it is that governments, opposition parties in Parliament and the Public Service are without the technical capacity and good sense to have established a modern and efficient financial system to manage state finances.
Maybe it is that political parties have deliberately left the systems, deemed by succeeding reports of the Auditor General to be inefficient with systemic deficiencies, with a purpose in mind. It may very well be the case that, in addition to the technical incapacity, we have an innate sense of dishonesty which cannot help but attach itself to the state financial system to facilitate fraud and corruption.
As reflected upon in last week’s column, the Auditor General’s 2015 report on the management of the public finances, the waste, the inadequate systems of reporting and accounting for expenditure, stretch back into the political administrative history of T&T.
One major plank of the People’s National Movement platform of 1956 was a promise to establish integrity in public office. Succeeding governments through the National Alliance for Reconstruction, the People’s National Movement and the United National Congress appointed ministers such as Selby Wilson, Gordon Draper and Wade Mark to reform the public sector. The assumption here is that in addition to the purely administrative element of the public sector, those governments understood that the financial systems were seriously malfunctioning and needed to be changed. Little was achieved; perhaps not even attempted.
The People’s Partnership government placed no special focus on transforming the Public Service.
As I made note of last week, the performance of a watchdog responsibility by parliamentary committees, the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Enterprises Accounts Committee, has not resulted in any change in accounting practices, nor has it proved capable of stopping the gross mismanagement of public funds and its inevitable associated corrupt practices.
The failure therefore of the public accounting systems also reflects on incapacity of the Parliament to prevent the leakage and possibly corrupt spending of public funds. It is another stripe against the present parliamentary system and further indication of the constitutional reform required.
But the wastage and facilitation of corruption do not end there. There is no audited figure of what has been spent on the Tarouba Complex and the efficacy of that spending; what is known is that not a ball has been rolled on the outfield; not a sport fan has been to the stadium; and almost ten years have gone by.
There has been no definitive word on the state of Napa, the cost of the damage to the building/s, the cost of the refurbishment, and who is responsible for paying the latter.
The People’s Partnership government ignored several buildings constructed under the People’s National Movement government (2003-2010) at a cost of hundreds of millions of public monies. While those buildings were left to deteriorate, $100 million was wasted (premises not occupied) on the rental of buildings such as 1 Alexandra Place. Was that deliberate action and/or inaction towards building a feeding trough from which many could feed?
The unplanned and unaccounted for spending on Life Sport reached over $400 million; the Minister of Finance, the Cabinet and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said not a word about the increased spending until the information was leaked to and published in the media.
Successive reports of commissions of enquiry have found links between poor accounting practices in the state financial system and corruption—The National Gas Company, WASA, the old ISCOTT. The Frank Rampersad team found corruption and inefficiencies galore in the state enterprise system back in 1988; the state sector of today has surpassed in size and corruption that of the 1980s.
The overall impact of having inefficient accounting systems in the public service, of the failure, even refusal to supply the AG with documents and responses on queries, of audited reports not being placed before the Parliament for years (one enterprise having not submitted such a report since its inception in 1974, and others without reports to the Parliament dating back to 2004 and even longer) is that they have become one base from which corruption has grown and spread.
There are concerns that the present government will allow the Children’s Hospital in Couva, spending on which has not been properly accounted for, to whither on the vine. Meantime, there is no agreement on how many billions have so far been expended on the Point Fortin Highway and the proportion of the work finished. Readers can add other spending which has not been adequately accounted for.
The evidence seems clear to this commentator: the inadequacies of the systems and monitoring mechanisms have been allowed to exist and spread because the political system had been and continues to be infected by race and party fanaticism. The two major parties and variations of them are aware that their tribes will vote them in at the appropriate time, and not be bothered by the mere wastage of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The issue is—who will drive the transformation to modern, structured and efficient accounting systems? Politicians will not voluntarily do it. Civil society interested in receiving value for money and intent on preventing corruption must act.