Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions have been asked to examine four Central Statistical Office (CSO) staffers.
Both agencies have been notified about the four CSO officers who had allegedly been falsifying labour force data, Planning Minister Camille Robinson-Regis has said.
Speaking during the 2017 Budget debate on Tuesday night, Robinson-Regis said on entering office, Government had had some issues with CSO staff.
“We found internal systems indicated that over a period of time, some CSO officers had been falsifying data related to the continuous sample survey of the population, labour force data in particular, and robust quality checks at the CSO revealed data was incorrect over a period of time.” She said four officers were allegedly involved in the activity.
“They’ve been suspended and an internal investigation is taking place. The officers have been removed from field work,” Robinson-Regis said, adding the situation was a breach of the Statistics Act.
“The DPP has been advised and the police has been asked to investigate,” she said.
“Since (PNM) coming into office the CSO has moved assiduously to get its standards back up to a certain level. So now it’s the normal information that the CSO gives out.”
She said Government has set up a team from the University of West Indies, private sector, Central Bank and the CSO to establish the National Statistical Institute next year.
Robinson-Regis also said there had been reports from the public which suggest some officers of the Town and Country Planning were not exercising correct procedures regarding the processing of applications.
“It seems there may have been some under-handedness over the last five years, and there’s a suggestion that there may have been some corrupt practices. We’ve established an internal investigation,” she said.
Robinson-Regis also said under the past administration, the ministry paid UWI lecturer Dr. Mukesh Basdeo $128,000 to prepare a chapter for a ministry policy framework document, “Action Plan 21.” She said Dr. Roger Hosein was also paid $154,000 to do a chapter on “Manpower Assessment.”
“This Dr. Roger Hosein again prepared a chapter on ‘Resource Allocation’ at a cost of $128,000... but this document (Action Plan 21) never became a reality because ministry staff found the work was substandard.”
Finance Minister Colm Imbert interjected, “And they get all that money?”
Robinson-Regis added, “...They got all that money and there were others; the total amount paid, including a foreign consultant, was $1,102,000 for no work - nothing that could have been used.”