The National Gas Company (NGC) has been asked to question why its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programmes increased by $190 million for the past five years.
According to the report released by the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on State Enterprises, annual expenditures increased from approximately $10 million in 2011 to over $200 million in 2015.
The committee was informed that for the past five years the CSR was focused on the themes of sport, civic life and empowerment.
The JSC recommended that the company makes a full disclosure to the Parliament of the findings of the investigations into the massive increases.
In 2015, NGC went on the defensive in the face of mounting criticisms over its alleged mismanagement of state funds as it outlined specific areas of its multi-million-dollar expenditure.
NGC has been under tremendous scrutiny following the publication of a series of articles arising out of the findings of an internal audit report conducted on its corporate spending.
The report, according to the articles, found that NGC corporate communications department’s budget mushroomed from $67 million in 2012 to almost $200 million in 2014.
The NGC had fired back at the reports and filed legal action against a daily newspaper (not the T&T Guardian) even as the then Finance Minister Larry Howai called for a probe into the matter.
Then NGC defended its spending as it said its Corporate Social Investment Programme (CSI) activities “help to develop the recipients of these sponsorships and therein the wealth of T&T, the development of our human potential.”
It also pointed to its sponsorship of a range of different sporting and cultural groups including steel orchestras; NGC Couva Joylanders, NGC La Brea Nightingales and NGC Steel XPlosion and tassa groups NGC T&T Sweet Tassa, NGC Show Stopperz and NGC Bao Simba.
Additionally, NGC gave a breakdown of the groups, totalling 241, that it gave sponsorship to during the period 2012 to 2014, including schools and cultural groups.
The company had also listed a further 78 sporting and cultural activities and groups it sponsored.