The Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, Alfred King was on Monday grilled by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) about an overpayment of over $2m on a $6.7m food contract for the Amerindian Hostel and he later admitted that he had uttered false statements.
According to the 2015 Auditor General’s Report (AG’s) the $6.759 million for fruits and vegetables was part of an expenditure of $47.058 million by the ministry on dietary items.
The report further states that while a voucher was made up for the supplier in the amount of $251,200 in December 2015, the AG found that the corresponding cheque was made out for a whopping $2.512 million, an overpayment of $2.261 million. This cheque was processed in January 2016 for December 31, 2015 and uplifted by the supplier on January 7 2016.
According to the ministry’s PS, who appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday, the $251,200 recorded on the voucher was meant to cover the last four months of the year, while noting that there is a ministerial limit of $250,000, although he recalled seeing transactions above that amount.
King, who was appointed to the position of PS earlier this year, told the PAC that he was advised that the contract was sourced through the quotation system and that those contractors were selected based on historical knowledge of the Ministry, guided by a registry of suppliers. However, it was later discovered that the ministry does not have a supplier registry.
Asked by committee member Juan Edghill why they awarded a year’s contract to someone knowing prices for fruits, vegetables and the like vary throughout the year, King said that based on guidance from the Deputy Permanent Secretary, the procedure is to engage the supplier for a period of six months at a time.
He told the committee that the supplier, Davenauth Sugrim whose place of business is located in Bourda Market, has been refunding the overpaid amount, with $258,170 currently outstanding.
The PS noted that the ministry recognizes that gaps existed in the system in relation to the supervision of the final certification of payments, and so now the procedure is for the Chief Accountant to make final checks before all payments to ensure that they correlate with the voucher amounts so there would not be a “slippage” of that kind again.
When asked by the committee’s chairman Irfaan Ali what the remaining $40.358 million under Dietary items accounted for, and whether any of those monies were also allocated to the Hostel, King could not state, but informed the committee that he could make available the breakdown within twenty minutes’ time.
Ali accommodated the PS by assigning the break, but when the meeting reconvened the PS was no closer to providing the information, as he reported that they were unable to get a printout from the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMAS). King, however, said that the officer authorized to access the system, who happens to be on sick leave, was called out and was working on making the information available to the PAC.
Ali informed King that the committee had made its own checks, then proceeded to point out that several statements on record from the PS had proven to be false.
Ali related that checks showed that the ministry does not have a registry of suppliers, and that the supplier who provided the fruits, greens and vegetables to the Hostel was still supplying them in 2016, contrary to what King had reported before the break.
The PS proceeded to apologise to the committee, noting that he was subsequently informed by his Deputy Permanent Secretary about what Ali was now relating and stated that the position being expressed by Ali was true.
While King encountered difficulty in several instances with supplying answers to the committee, he did not once call on the former PS Vibert Welch, who also formed a part of his contingent, to provide assistance in accounting for the matters that arose.
Further discussion on this matter was suspended by the PAC for the requisite information to be supplied.
