Was wife of senior functionary

The Auditor General’s report on the public accounts for 2006 has highlighted a series of problems in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) including a case where the army hired three vehicles from a maid who happened to be the “wife of a senior functionary in its core”.

The report was presented to Parliament last week, almost a year after the deadline. Addressing the expenditure of $136M under the category of Other Transport, Travel and Postage, the Audit Office said that $128.6M was spent on the hiring of vehicles. Of this figure there were 191 transactions valued at $55.6M involving the army and its staffers.

“This practice is devoid of any ingredients that would render the transactions transparent, since the proferring of contracts among staff members and its institutions creates bases for conflicts of interest, irregularities, fraud and/or corruption”.

Of particular note, the report said was that among the contracts to staffers was the hiring of three vehicles from the maid to the tune of $2.5M. “In this case, the army had hired three cars from the maid, who incidentally was the wife of a senior functionary in its core”, the report said.

When this matter was raised by the audit office with the relevant officer in the GDF, it was explained that “systems would be instituted to discontinue hiring of vehicles, which are owned by members of the force”.

For its part, the Audit Office recommended that the GDF institute measures to exclude GDF staffers from the awards of contracts for goods and services. The audit office also pointed out that the army’s system required that prior to any hiring of a vehicle that its ownership be validated but there was no evidence that this procedure was carried out in some of the cases.  It also said that there was no evidence that the vehicle hire earnings were submitted to the Guyana Revenue Autho-rity. In relation to purchases of materials, equipment and supplies, the report found that tender board procedures were not followed for four transactions totaling $18.4M. The army had been cited in previous years for non-compliance with tender procedures.

In relation to the purchase of fuel and lubricants, 25 vouchers totaling $60M were not presented in support of fuel purchases and this made it difficult to determine whether value was received for the amount.

“Covert operations” was the way in which the army explained why it utilized prepaid phone services and phone cards. The audit office recommended that the army make use of identification-blocked post-paid services for its covert operations.

In relation to the capital account of $51.5M, the audit office report found that three transactions totalling $11.8M required approval from the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board but this was not obtained. Transactions totalling $28.4M for the purchase of five Toyota pick-ups, one generator, three Motorola pack radios, 15 Dell desk-top computers and five HP Laser Jet Printers were not brought to account in the stock records.