City Treasurer Ron McCalman was placed in the hot seat yesterday during an appearance before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), where he was questioned about an eight-year gap in the city’s financial records.
According to the Auditor General’s report for 2015, although the Georgetown City Council had on hand financial statements for 2005 and 2014, no financial statements were submitted for the period in between or the year 2015.
McCalman, however, who has occupied his position since 2012, told the committee yesterday that financial statements were presented to the council for the period 2012 to 2014, a claim which did not sit lightly with the Chairman of the committee Irfaan Ali, who proceeded to question why the AG’s report did not reflect the treasurer’s claims.
McCalman maintained that the records had been submitted to the Council and said the documents were also directed to the AG through the Ministry of Communities, as was customary. Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Communities Emil McGarrell, however, who was also present at yesterday’s committee sitting, stated that he was unaware of such and said that all documentation indicated that those reports were still outstanding.
“Can I take your attention to the ministry’s response to what you are saying?” Ali directed at McCalman. “The responsibility of submitting the financial statements for the Council lies solely with the Treasurer of the Council. You are not going to hide under the PS.”
Prior to this confrontation, the Treasurer had been asked by PPP/C Member of Parliament Juan Edghill how the city had managed to arrive at a financial statement for 2014 given that there was an eight-year gap. McCalman had explained then that in 2012, there was a discussion with the AG about using documents from that year and making their way forward as they “try to concentrate on the previous years” and locate records for the back years.
“Locating of records? We can’t locate records at the City Council? Is there a special circumstance that occurred that led to the damage or disappearance of records at the City Council?” Edghill questioned.
This led to the revelation that a number of documents had been moved from City Hall to the Council’s archives, located in Water Street, after occasions of flooding. “There were a couple times when there were floods and documents were soaked and had to be taken to archives at Water Street to dry off and be retrieved. That is the case,” McCalman stated. Although he has operated in the capacity of Treasurer since 2012, McCalman had worked in the department in other capacities prior, including as an accounting clerk.
McCalman admitted that this information regarding flood-affected documents had never been made known to the PS, and AG Deodat Sharma also stated that this explanation for gaps in the records were never told to his office.
It was agreed that those records would be handed over to the PS and the AG “with immediacy.”
In response to a query by APNU+AFC Member of Parliament Jermaine Figueira as to the department’s plan to ensure that there was no reoccurrence of such a situation, McCalman stated that there was a new storage facility in the existing vault to protect the documents. Furthermore, with regard to existing documents, there was an ongoing programme, started last year, to verify the integrity of those records and have them saved to a computerised database.
McGarrell, who had noted that foremost among the City Council’s challenges was financial management and that instituting financial regulations was the number one priority, said that the ministry will be looking to improve the financial management of all their local organs across the board.
“The work has begun, we have started a situational analysis based on the information that was submitted by Council for 2012 to 2015 and it’s interesting what it showed, and 2016 will be received shortly and we’ll continue analysis… We will take this to have further and more detailed discussion with each council and we hope that at some point for a roundtable discussion so that we can come up with a common approach,” McGarrell stated. He added that their target for completion of the situational analysis was April, after which, work will be done to correct all noted improprieties at the municipal level.
