-wanted time to review before vote
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman Vishnu Panday last Monday abstained from a vote on a proposal by Public Works Minister Juan Edghill to examine multiple years of the Auditor General’s reports simultaneously, saying he wanted time to review the measure.
The proposal was passed with Panday and committee member Nandranie Singh from the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party abstaining.
In an interview with Kiskadee Watch yesterday, Panday shared that he had requested a few days to examine the proposal before taking a position but was told by members that the motion had to be put to a vote once it was moved. He had asked to provide a written position by today (Thursday) after reviewing previous committee proceedings and the applicable procedures.
“I need a couple of days to look at the number of issues raised on his proposal, because I want to look at what transpired in the past, what prompted it in the past, if it was done in the past as they’re claiming,” Panday recalled he asked at the meeting.
But PPP/C committee members Gail Teixeira and Edghill maintained that the proposal was a motion that had to be put to a vote, rather than one on which the chairman could delay a decision while conducting further research.
Panday accepted that position as a matter of procedure but maintained that he wanted to be properly informed before expressing his views. “I had no choice, legally standing or by the standing order, I had no choice and they put it to a vote,” he said.
The proposal seeks to address the backlog of outstanding Auditor General’s reports by allowing the PAC to examine similar issues across several financial years during the same sitting. Rather than scrutinising each report separately, the committee could consider related issues side by side across the 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 reports. For example, if concerns were raised about the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) or the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in multiple years, the committee could examine those matters together instead of revisiting them during separate sittings.
According to Panday, this could reduce the time spent on deliberations, lower costs and limit the need to repeatedly bring officials from hinterland communities to Georgetown to provide information. Further, officials could be summoned for a full day to address several related matters across different reports, allowing the committee to make faster progress in clearing the backlog.
However, he insisted that the scrutiny of the reports will remain thorough. Although he abstained from the vote, he said the committee’s decision would not prevent him, as chairman, from demanding the necessary information and explanations when examining the reports.
He said the PAC must continue to scrutinise public expenditure carefully and ensure that officials provide the information required to account for the use of public funds. “The mere fact that I did not subscribe in accepting the proposal at that time; it was because of the information that they put forward, which requires one going back to records and check to verify what they have said,” he shared.
He said it was too early to determine whether the new approach would work, since the committee had not yet begun implementing it, indicating that his assessment would depend on how the process unfolds and whether it allows the committee to improve its efficiency without compromising the depth of its scrutiny.
Panday noted that, notwithstanding the motion’s passage, he remained entitled to ask questions, request supporting documents and insist on detailed explanations in keeping with the PAC’s mandate and public expectations.
2019 audit matters
Meanwhile, Panday also confirmed that the PAC completed the outstanding matters from the 2019 Auditor General’s report during Monday’s meeting, describing the exercise as time-consuming and noting that the Auditor General’s reports contain extensive details that require careful examination.
However, he clarified that the matters addressed on Monday represented only the remaining portion of the 2019 report, which had already undergone scrutiny by the previous PAC.
He said two outstanding items, identified as lines 120 and 146, were addressed during the meeting, with receipts supplied and explanations provided by the Finance Secretary appearing satisfactory. “The information supplied, receipts, and explanation offered by the Finance Secretary seems clear,” he said.
The next PAC meeting is scheduled for November 16, when the committee is expected to begin examining the 2020 Auditor General’s report.
During Monday’s meeting, APNU parliamentarians Ganesh Mahipal and Juretha Fernandes supported the proposal, recalling that similar approaches had been used in 2016 and 2017.
Mahipaul referred to previous instances under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration when reports were dealt with using a combined-report approach, rather than a merger of the reports themselves.
Discussion