#BTEditorial – Keeping the republic from going bananas with fiscal mismanagement?

Government’s promised response to the red flags raised by the Auditor General in his scrutiny of the accounts of ministries and public departments has been as welcome as it is has been intriguing.

For most Barbadians, the question remains, what happens now?

We are overdue for  definitive action on issues of public fiscal management that successive administrations have repeatedly failed to confront.

The script has been old and tiresome. Year after year, when the Auditor General report is tabled we express collective shock and outrage at its findings; the blame game between the political parties takes over;  no one is held accountable; we mouth support for the Auditor General; then the nine-day wonder passes.

We move on until the next report is laid with no fewer alarming findings of glaring deficiencies in financial reporting and record keeping, poor internal controls at state-owned enterprises and reports of failed projects where millions of taxpayer dollars are missing or misspent.

The truism that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is apt for this litany of woe followed by inertia.

Barbados is at a new juncture as we have turned a chapter as a republic. There could be no better foundation than accountability and transparency than the firm and unambiguous rooting of power – the power of the purse – in the People. There is no king but the citizen.

So it is difficult for any right-thinking citizen to be called on to be more productive, to sacrifice and hold it together in today’s straitened circumstances and yet bear witness to profligacy with the public purse.

We thus welcome the news that the Barbados Police Service has been called in to help retrieve $3.9 million from those who dishonestly obtained money in the name of 34 pensioners who had died.  We keenly await the findings of that probe.

There are more issues besides that cry out for attention. Should a reasonable Barbadian not demand answers on why the Government will now have to pay an additional $10.6 million to complete the beleaguered School Meals Centre at Six Roads, St Philip, more than ten years after construction began?

Spearheaded by the previous administration, the centre was to be built between August 2012 and January 2014, by an undisclosed firm, for $19.9 million.

But by December 31, 2018, six months into the BLP administration, Government had already spent $23.12 million, inclusive of $7.38 million for kitchen equipment.

And of course, there is the long-running Four Seasons saga in which Barbadians learned last Friday that the Government’s advance of $124 million to settle a loan guarantee did not go through all the right procedures.

In his report, Auditor General Leigh Trotman pointed out that the advance, made under the Stuart administration, “was not from an appropriation as required by law”. 

Director of Finance Ian Carrington, in his response laid in Parliament, last Thursday pointed out that the Clearwater Bay Limited (Guarantee of Loan) Act, 2011, providing a Government guarantee to restart the project was in fact passed and signed into law in March 2011.

But more was required of the Government at the time, he said.

Carrington told Parliament: “In spite of the passing of this Bill, the advance should have been properly appropriated by a resolution in Parliament once the guarantee was called, as outlined by the Auditor General in his 2018 report.”

We ask why is the public only now being made aware of this?

Shouldn’t taxpayers have been told upfront why it was necessary to write-off $124 million before it occurred?

Now we are being told that Government does not hold the title to the property and the matter is before the  court. 

Such wanton and egregious instances of waste, abuse are unworthy of a young republic with an ancient history of good governance. The Mottley administration must now take decisive action to end this recurring nightmare.

It can start with the Auditor’s General recommendations. Enough can’t be said about allocating this important office all necessary resources and protecting it from political interference.

Equally important is the Auditor General’s call for Parliament to make provision for a functioning public Accounts Committee given the absence of an Opposition Leader that would maintain a watchful eye on the state’s business and call public officials to account for their administration of the nation’s affairs.

A permanent, standing oversight committee of both the House and Senate would be a sign of a Barbados that is keen to grow up constitutionally not of a republic gone bananas.