More hands needed in accounts, says former dept head

Financial Controller of the Transport Board Felicia Sue has suggested that the over-invoicing between 2015 to 2018 at the cash-strapped, state-owned entity could have been avoided or picked up early had there been adequate staff in some areas.

Sue, who was placed in the hot seat of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) again on Friday to respond to questions regarding alleged improprieties at the Transport Board during the review period, said she would often raise concerns about maintenance costs.

During the hearing, issues relating to over-invoicing and maintenance costs and the sale of a bus, were featured highly.

When asked what responses she would receive from the general manager and quality assurance manager in relation to her queries about costs, Sue said she would simply “get an acknowledgement [from] the quality assurance department”.

“Often times I got no written response,” she told the PAC.

Sue said at one point there were more than 100 people in the finance department, which she explained was made up of several areas including revenue, fuel, stores, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and statistics.

“So in revenue alone, there might have been 40 or 50 persons, given the rota and they used to operate basically 24 hours,” said Sue.

“The accounting departments would have, if you take accounts payable, just one person; accounts receivable had two persons; payroll had, at one point, four to five persons. So when I say accounts department it is limited to those areas – accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and accounting,” she explained.

She said the role of the accounts payable personnel was to received invoices, prepare cheques, and do reconciliations, supervised by an accountant.

However, when asked if she believed the number of people in accounts payable was sufficient given the matter of double invoicing, which was uncovered by the special 2015-2018 Auditor General Report, she replied “no”.

Sue explained that she would “often times” make a request that more people be placed in accounts receivable, but this did not take place due to the protocols in place for the hiring and shifting of staff from one area to another.

“There would have been a need for additional resources, most definitely in accounts payables and receivables. As I said, there was one person in accounts payable and the workload was a lot,” she said.

“We were influenced by the fact that the budget could not allow for more persons to be hired. Even in having an additional accountant, I remember putting that case and you had to go through the stakeholders like the union and things like that. But the main restraint was the fact that we did not have the finance,” she explained.

She stressed that her efforts on “several occasions” to move individuals from one area of the finance department to accounts receivable were met by “resistance”.

“You know we were heavily unionized, so we always had a situation where persons felt they were here longer so this person should not come in and they should be the one, but they might not necessarily have had the skill set. So that was a constraint,” she said.

Making it clear she was not suggesting the union would put up a resistance, Sue explained that it was only a matter of protocol that dictated “years of service and various things to be taken into consideration when decisions are made”, adding that discussion had to be had with the “stakeholders”.

Although stating that the individual who entered information into the magento accounting system should have been aware of the double invoicing, the financial controller agreed that it was possible for double invoicing to take place regularly because of an apparent lack of knowledge about the accounting system.

The Auditor General report noted that the Transport Board was charged twice by Trans Tech Inc. for the same work done on the same bus, on four occasions, totalling $257,149.08, which was $128,574.54 more than what was due.

The report, which triggered the PAC investigation in November 2019, said the only difference was the invoice numbers on the eight invoices. (MM)