Officials from the Region 10 Regional Democratic Council (RDC) were given a failing grade when they appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament on Monday to explain multi-million dollar overpayments to contractors cited in the Auditor General’s 2010 Report.
Committee members were not at all impressed by the fact that each of the 13 discrepancies cited by the Auditor General’s Office for scrutiny during Monday’s meeting involved overpayments of varying natures, primarily to contractors for incomplete and/or substandard works.
Representing the RDC was a five-person team, headed by Regional Executive Officer (REO) Yolanda Hilliman.
According to the Auditor General’s report, chief among the transgressions were overpayments totalling $14.583M, which were made to contractors in respect to sixteen projects. When asked what efforts were being made to recoup these funds, Hilliman explained that collection efforts on several projects were moving very slowly for several reasons.
On one of the projects, the Auditor General’s Office found that at the time
