Sanctions loom for derelict permanent secretaries
Published:Thursday | January 13, 2022 | 12:09 AM
Financial Secretary Darlene Morrison has signalled that permanent secretaries could face sanctions if they are found responsible for breaching the Financial Administration and Audit (FAA) Act.
Morrison’s comments came during Wednesday’s meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), where she was pressed on concerns highlighted in the auditor general’s 2021 annual report on the education ministry’s infringement of government rules.
“Currently, the accounting officer, to the best of my knowledge, can be held accountable in terms of actual sanctions. I can’t speak to them right now,” she told the PAAC.
In the report that was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis said that her department found evidence of several instances in which the Ministry of Education breached the FAA Instructions.
The report also revealed that the ministry failed to present its appropriation accounts for the seven-year period 2012-2013 to 2018-2019.
The auditor general warned that the ministry runs the risk of falling victim to fraud, unauthorised withdrawals, and significant bank errors because of its failure to prepare its bank reconciliation statements in a timely manner.
SIGNIFICANT RISKS
Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams said on Wednesday that she agreed with the auditor general that failing to audit accounts in a timely manner and ensure up-to-date bank reconciliations presented significant financial risk.
Williams said that the ministry has already taken important steps to restore financial integrity system-wide across the ministry.
When asked to respond to the issue on Wednesday, Morrison initially said that breaches of the FAA law should be elevated to the Attorney General’s Department. However, she sought additional time to get more information.
But PAAC Chairman Mikael Phillips, seemingly, was dissatisfied with her response.
“To say that you are going to do more investigation on it when it is in breach for seven years is not enough,” he said.
Juliet Holness, member of parliament for St Andrew East Rural, enquired whether there was any action, against dereliction, that could be taken against financial officers tasked with administering and updating accounting records.
NO RED FLAG?
Phillips asked the financial secretary if any accounting officer had been held accountable over the seven-year period when no appropriation accounts were presented to the auditor general.
The permanent secretaries who were in charge of the education ministry over the seven-year period 2012 to 2019 were Elaine Foster Allen, Maurice Smith, and Dean Roy Bernard.
“You are the financial secretary, and the buck stops with you, and I am sure over a seven-year period ... it would have raised a red flag, even on your own desk, that this was in breach,” Phillips said.
Holness asserted that some members of the public believe that a minister should be held accountable for any breach that occurs in a ministry.
“It is very critical that it is understood that the ministry is effectively a business. The permanent secretary is in charge of that business,” she said.
Holness urged the financial secretary to ascertain how many MDAs were not up to date with their accounting records and why.
In a media statement on Wednesday, Williams said that since she became education minister 16 months ago, she wrote to the auditor general on July 22, 2021, seeking her permission to hire external financial auditors to bring the long-standing audits of the appropriations accounts up to date.
“Since then, we sought and received permission to shore up the capacity at the ministry’s Internal Audit Unit to allow them to fast-track the backlog of auditing work that needs to be done for the appropriations accounts. Fourteen new positions were approved for the unit, to include audit managers, senior auditors, and auditors. Some of those positions have been filled,” said Williams.
Former permanent secretary Foster Allen, who held the job from 2012 to 2015, told The Gleaner that she was unable to recall what happened and why the appropriation accounts were not presented during her tenure.
She indicated that the appropriations accounts would, like all others, have been brought to her attention by the chief financial officer, who would prepare them.
Dr Maurice Smith, who was permanent secretary from November 2015 to November 2016, said he declined comment.
Efforts to reach Dean Roy Bernard for comment were unsuccessful. He was transferred from the education ministry to the finance ministry in 2019 after being appointed in November 2016.
Bernard has taken the matter to court.