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Mr. Brummell’s purported appointment as acting Commissioner is unconstitutional

From the press, the public has learnt the Mr. Leroy Brummell DSM has been appointed as acting Commissioner of Police. It seems, once again, that the country is being treated with casual if not reckless disregard with respect to constitutional positions.

Article 211 of the Constitution provides for the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Police to be appointed by the President after meaningful consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and the chairperson of the Police Service Commission. Specifically, Article 211(2) makes the appointment of an acting Commissioner subject to the same constitutional requirements as the Commissioner.

I am advised that there has been no consultation on the “appointment” of Mr. Brummell. It is therefore my opinion that Mr. Brummell’s purported appointment is unconstitutional, null and void.

For good measure Mr. Henry Greene who is the substantive Commissioner was required, under Article 211 (3) to vacate office when he attained age fifty five (55). He did not do so because according to Dr. Luncheon the government has entered into an agreement with him to continue until age 60. That agreement too is unconstitutional.

So we are in the unique position where both the substantive Commissioner (Greene) and the acting Commissioner (Brummell) exist in a constitutional illegality. What a country!

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Mr Ramnarine was exercising a right and duty under Article 32 of the Constitution

There has been a call from high-up for the disciplining of senior police officer David Ramnarine for exposing certain practices in the Guyana Police Force, and for claiming that his constitutional rights trump the Force Orders. The practice he identified was in connection with the payment of $90 million from Contingencies Fund to feed the Police over the November 28 elections period. On the question of the constitution, Mr. Ramnarine was in fact not only exercising a right but rather carrying out a duty which Article 32 of the Constitution imposes on every citizen. And as just about everyone by now knows, the Constitution is the supreme law of Guyana and not even the Parliament can make a law that is in conflict with it.

I cannot see then how some Force Order purporting to restrict a right could abridge a duty imposed by the Constitution. I would therefore like to receive from the Minister of Home Affairs an informed opinion on which instrument – the Constitution or the Force Orders, or which interest – secrecy of the Police Welfare Fund or the protection of public property – his Government considers paramount.

For, as Article 32 states: “It is the joint duty of the State, the society and every citizen (emphasis mine) to combat and prevent crime and other violations of the law and to take care of and protect public property.”

The country is fortunate and grateful that circumstances forced the lone Mr. Ramnarine to exercise his constitutional duty under Article 32. It is frightening to reflect on the several others in the Police Force, some more and others less senior to him, the GDF, the ministries and departments, and the hundreds of thousands of Guyanese who daily fail in their Article 32 duty.

Whether by accident or intent, Article 32 is a Whistleblowers protection in the public service. I would like to see some enabling legislation aimed at giving effect to Article 32, and to wrong-doings in the private sector as well.

I draw attention also to a further development from the same issue. In the process of his revelation, Mr. Ramnarine implicitly exposed a weakness in the State audits to which I have been drawing public attention: that a bare statement in the Audit Report that drawings from the Contingencies Fund did not meet the criteria set out under the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act was not enough. The Audit Office needs to go further and by a scientific sample, audit Contingencies Fund transactions for accuracy, authority, authenticity and completeness from what auditors call cradle to grave: in this case from the issue of the drawing right by the Minister of Finance to his timely request to the National Assembly for replenishment. The Minister of Finance has only up to the next sitting of the Assembly to seek approval.

I have noticed that the Auditor General (ag.), against a background of public concerns, has announced a special investigation into the $90 million fiasco. I should remind him that Dr. Ashni Singh’s Supplementary Appropriation for expenditure during the parliamentary break involved $5.7 Billion, of which $2.4 Billion was judgmental. I doubt that the public and the parliamentary opposition will be satisfied with another limited scope, incomplete and therefore inadequate exercise.

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Time to consider new accounting rules

Introduction
The brouhaha over Financial Papers 7 and 8 in the National Assembly has served to expose the state of the public financial management in Guyana. The issue is a natural consequence of the new configuration in the Assembly which compels the Minister of Finance to demonstrate some accountability to the country. In that sense November 28, 2011 is potentially a blessing as prior to that date and that event, a request to the National Assembly for approval of Supplementary Appropriation of any number of millions would have been a non-event and automatic confirmation.

This column had written ad nauseam about the several breaches of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act which was intended to address all matters concerning the preparation and execution of the annual budget; the receipt, control and disbursement of public money; the accounting for public money; and all other matters to bring transparency and efficient management of the finances of Guyana. While the Act requires some amendments, it was an improvement over what it replaced and should have brought greater accountability to the country. It did not, and it has become progressively worse as state and party lines become blurred.

But Guyana is not alone in this situation. A recent article in the World Economic Journal said that government accounting makes Enron look good. According to the article, accounting practices employed by many governments around the world are not only deficient but “sometimes fraudulent”. The rest of this column is based on that article.

Remembering Enron
The informed observer will recall the spate of corporate failures just over a decade ago. While the major problems were in the USA in which Enron was the worst face, in Europe a company called Parmalat was able to get a clean audit report even though there was huge $3 billion hole in its balance sheet. As is so often the case, governments reacted swiftly with legislation to remedy identified shortcomings in the financial reporting and assurance of publicly listed companies. The most significant legislation was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the United States, which – in the context of already robust reporting requirements – imposed detailed requirements for the assessment of internal controls over financial reporting.

SOX also imposed stricter independence requirements on auditors, who became subject to closer scrutiny and inspection by government regulators. Perhaps because the Act had a number of extra-territorial effects, modified elements of it became a template for government action in many jurisdictions around the world.

Both in the USA and elsewhere, these measures were aimed at restoring confidence in capital markets, which had been dealt severe blows by the misreporting of corporations and the associated audit failures.

Not for governments
But there are some double standards when it comes to making rules by governments and their own practices. The seriousness of the situation was brought home very strongly in the instance of the Greece basket case in which self-interested politicians and public servants were keen to ensure that an accurate picture of the country’s finances was not made available. While changing reporting arrangements and processes will not of itself ensure that fraudulent reporting is eliminated, implementing a system that is based on a structured, robust framework permits reported information to be audited – that is, it allows independent assurance about the reliability of the information presented, and whether it is free from material misstatement.

Of course, one of the reasons is that politicians and public servants do not always act in the public interest – hence the explanation why governments do not want transparency, why they do not want anyone else setting their financial reporting standards, and why ministries of finance generally do not advocate for better accounting. Indeed, we have seen in Guyana a strong reaction against the calls for better accountability to the point where no less a person than the President, less than four months following one of the most expensive elections anywhere, wants to go back to the polls for a majority that would stifle calls for greater accountability. Of course the President tells the taxpayers that those calling for greater accountability are anti-development!

The countries of Europe and more directly Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (PIIGS) have made it abundantly clear that not only in the Third World but in northern countries as well, government debt cannot be considered ‘risk free’. Private-sector organisations must provide detailed, audited financial reporting and disclosures to banks and credit providers so appropriate risk premiums and the price of borrowing can be determined. Once the ‘risk-free’ assumption can no longer be made, investors in public debt require similar detailed information from governments, and for the same reasons.

The cons
Arguments against enhanced public-sector financial reporting, disclosure and financial management typically involve arguments that superior methods are either not available, or that they come at a prohibitive cost. The former is patently untrue for governments that continue to use traditional, cash-based methods of accounting; while the latter can be countered – perhaps with a little more effort – through careful examination of the costs of making, and of not making, such improvements.

The unexpected costs of poor decision-making and fraudulent reporting are currently being felt in not-so-uncertain terms.

Citizens and investors deserve more reliable and complete financial information, and greater transparency and accountability, from governments. The costs of not doing so are just too high.

The Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board noted recently that “without transparency, neither can there be trust or accountability”. Governments that employ traditional cash-based public-sector accounting cannot be transparent; their reporting necessarily presents only part of the total picture. Traditional methods of government accounting – cash-based accounting are simply insufficient to allow governments to discharge accountability to the public, or to permit investors and potential investors to make fully informed decisions. Better accounting practices are required.

Cash-based versus accrual accounting
The cash-based accounting which Guyana and most other countries practice, reports cash inflows (eg from taxation receipts, interest earned on investments, and proceeds from sale of assets) and cash outflows (eg spending on government programmes, interest on borrowing, lending, asset purchases, public-sector salaries and wages).

A major weakness in that system is its failure to distinguish between the economic characteristics of different types of transactions since it treats the sale of public property in the same manner as cash raised through taxation. Likewise, government lending – a cash outflow – is treated the same as the payment of public-sector salaries.

Not that cash-based accounting does not have its use. It clearly does – both in the private as well as the public sector. Any entity, whether an NGO, government or a commercial entity needs to know its cash position, inflows and outflows, borrowing requirements, and liquidity position. But cash is not all and in fact cash-based accounting can be significantly misleading, if not plain creative accounting.

A government faced with the difficult decision of balancing its budget may find it expedient to dispose of the crown jewels rather than cutting expenditure or raising taxes. But what happens when there are no further assets to sell? In other words, cash-based accounting allows politicians to delay and defer the tough decisions to subsequent years and generations of taxpayers.

Conclusion
As the Minister of Finance prepares his 2012 Budget, he may just spare a thought about the manner in which the government accounts are kept and whether the existing cash-based system serves the long-term interest of the country. Both the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) and IMF Government Finance Statistics (GFS) – promote the use of accrual-based reporting.

As an accountant himself, the Minister of Finance may find it a relatively straightforward exercise to remedy the reporting deficiencies of government accounts: introduce a robust accrual-based financial reporting framework.

There is already a framework called IPSAS (International Public Sector Accounting Standards) developed and issued by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board. To do so requires two important things: (i) the existence of such a framework; and (ii) the will by politicians to make the decision to improve government transparency and accountability, and therefore enable greater scrutiny of their decision-making. While the former exists – in the form of IPSASs – the incentives provided to politicians in most countries mean that the latter is very difficult to achieve.

And that is why I do not hold out much hope for change any time soon.

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There are numerous examples of the Finance Minister’s mismanagement

Mr. Nigel Hinds’ letter ‘Ashni is in the best and brightest category’ (Stabroek News, March 15, 2012) has drawn sharp comments on the meaning and intent of the term “best and brightest”, particularly from those who felt that Mr. Hinds was unjustifiably praising Dr. Ashni Singh, the Minister of Finance. In fact, “best and brightest” is a term of deprecation going back at least to a letter in a 1769 publication in which the writer used it mockingly and ironically to describe King George III’s ministers. Exactly two hundred years later, its place in infamy was sealed when journalist David Halberstam used it as the title of his #1 bestseller which exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of the whiz-kids of John Kennedy’s disastrous policy that led to America’s ignominious defeat in the Vietnam War.

That it was in that context of derision that Mr. Hinds identified Dr. Singh is clear from his paragraph calling for his “cleansing the Augean Stables filled with questionable deals, those facilitated by National Commercial and Industrial Development Limited (NICIL), sale of Sanata Textile Mills, Amaila Falls Project engineered by the infamous Fip Motilal, Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC] contracts with New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corpora-tion [New GPC], and the absence of lottery funds from Consolidated Fund to name a ‘few’ ”.

It is public knowledge that Dr. Singh was personally involved in every one of these “questionable deals”, and in the case of the “infamous” Fip Motilal, Dr. Singh’s ministry caused to be issued through GINA a three page attack of undignified calumny on “Ram-like critics” who, on the bizarre selection of Fip Motilal as contractor for the road to the Amaila Falls, dared to expose Motilal as an unqualified contractor. They have been proved right and Dr. Singh wrong. In the case of the GPHC and New GPC contracts, it is the Dr. Singh-controlled National Procurement and Tender Administration Board that annually approves single source contracts, and outrageous of all, Dr. Singh chairs the truly egregious NICIL which spearheaded the tender for the Amaila Road Project.

But these were only a few examples of Dr. Singh’s “brightness”. Here are some others:

1. Every single audit report since Dr. Singh became Minister of Finance reminds us that “the Contingencies Fund continues to be abused”. And the abuser: the Minister of Finance in whom section 41 (2) of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA) invests sole powers and responsibilities over the Contingencies Fund.

2. Dr. Singh’s Finance Ministry has underwritten every one of the irregular transactions of the Jagdeo Administration since October 2006, including the infamous Pradoville 2 for which Dr. Singh’s NICIL allotted house lots to former President Jagdeo, Cabinet Members, members of NICIL boardand friends, all at below market price; computer purchases from a Brooklyn barbershop location; sole sourcing of school books for $90 million; disastrous multi-billion dollar road and other infrastructure contracts.

3. On all but one occasion of Dr. Singh’s presentation of the [annual] mid-year report under section 67 of the FMAA, the report pre-dates by months the date of its publication, prompting integrity concerns.

4. Dr. Singh has never once complied with section 21 of the FMAA dealing with conditional appropriations. Nor on his own recent admission in the National Assembly, has he ever complied with section 24 (4)of the FMAA, on each of the fourteen occasions he came to the National Assembly for supplementary funds, concealing the annual budget deficit.

5. Dr. Singh has begun to use creative financing to plug the ballooning budget deficit caused by over-spending and non-receipt of the Norway money. In 2010 he treated $11.117 billion as Miscellaneous Income, “the net result of the ‘closure’ of inactive accounts, and retiring long outstanding obligations in relation to the issuance and redemption of Government Securities.”

6. Dr. Singh was central to the sale of state property and the unlawful granting of tax exemptions to the Ramroop group. In these transactions, Dr. Singh had not one but three occasions to check the validity, legality and propriety of the transactions: as Minister of Finance, as Chairman of NICIL, and as a senior Cabinet minister. He missed them all.

7. As Minister of Finance, Dr. Singh controls the Consolidated Fund and has allowed the proceeds from the Lottery to be placed in a “special” account outside of the Consolidated Fund. He approves the operations of this extra-ordinarily special account from which only his mentor, former President Jagdeo could spend.

8. Dr. Singh was part of a transaction for $4 billion in which there was sufficient evidence to refer Minister of Housing Irfaan Ally to the Privileges Committee for allegedly misleading the National Assembly.

9. Dr. Singh has presented five budgets to the National Assembly totaling $627.5 Billion. During that time, we have had no natural disasters or economic shocks undermining the Budget. Yet, during the same period, Dr. Singh has returned to the Assembly with fourteen (14) supplementary appropriation bills covering over 440 transactions totaling $67.5 billion –conditions that would embarrass even a mediocre budget controller. For good measure, none of the transactions involving drawings from the Contingencies Fund, covering a minimum of $19.5 billion, was brought within the “next sitting” of the National Assembly timeframe required under section 41 (5) of the FMAA.

10. Dr. Singh has ministerial responsibility for the National Insurance Scheme and the Insurance Act. To him therefore, is due more than a quarter share of the blame in the Jagdeo-Dr. Singh-Luncheon-Gita Singh quartet for the NIS loss of $5 billion in Clico.

11. As Finance Minister Dr. Singh would have known of the mistake that led to the excessive VAT rate of 16%. In order to disguise the effect of the mistake and a windfall of close to twenty billion dollars, he sought supplementary spending provisions of $18 billion in the last two months of 2007! “Brightness” is certainly not the word to describe such shocking conduct. No wonder, neither Dr. Singh nor former President Jagdeo has responded to my several public challenges to them to release an unredacted copy of the report of the Barbadian consultant who was contracted to carry out the exercise. As a result the state has so far gouged the Guyanese taxpayer of more than fifty billion dollars.

As readers would expect, such a letter cannot address all the financial shenanigans hidden in the spending of $627 billion (US$3,135 million) during the last Parliament. Only a thorough investigation initiated by the National Assembly will reveal how the “best and brightest” Dr. Singh and his mentor, that other “best and brightest” Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, have mismanaged the country’s finances for five years.

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Auditor General Report 2010 – Part 4 Conclusion

Introduction
Today’s column concludes the review of the Auditor General Report on the audits of the ministries, departments and regions for the year 2010. Readers will recall that the report was delivered to the Speaker of the National Assembly – conveniently for the first time in several years – within the statutory deadline but also conveniently, after the last sitting of the Ninth Parliament so that it could not be tabled and its contents become available to the public prior to the November general and regional elections. Clearly the Speaker of the National Assembly and PPP/C presidential aspirant Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, S.C. did not think it important enough to have a final sitting of the National Assembly for the tabling of the report.

Any reader of the report will be struck by the repetitiveness of the matters reported – and for the more discerning, the matters not addressed – in the report. We get excited at the level of abuse of the Contingencies Fund by the Minister of Finance. But neither the Audit Office nor the Public Accounts Committee appears to have recognised that it was not enough to consider only whether the payments from the Fund met the criteria of “urgent, unavoidable and unforeseen” required before the issuance of a drawing right by the Minister of Finance.

There is no evidence from the report that the Audit Office examined any of the following transactions financed from the Contingencies Fund: the sum of $198 million as a provision for Amerindian development projects; or $7.971 million for installation of water and electricity at the Amerindian Dormitory at Liliendaal; or $70 million for the purchase of accommodation items for the GDF; or $75.6 million to complete the National Swimming Pool (sic); or $38 million for ten compactor trucks or where they might be; or $12 million for furniture for Region 3 schools; or $26.3 million for resurfacing the cycle and car park at the National Park.

Epiphany and Nelson’s eye
The 2010 report has departed from its long-held policy of spelling out annually the expenditure from the lottery funds and was only willing to state that the money was spent “in accordance with the guidelines for access to the Lottery funding, which included funding for activities that promoted cultural and youth and sports development, financed medical treatment overseas and economic support for disadvantaged groups, among others.” The Audit Office has also reversed its position that the failure to put the proceeds into the Consolidated Fund is unconstitutional. Its epiphany it seems was the result of an opinion from the Attorney General who is also a member of the Cabinet. To most persons – but clearly not to the Auditor General – it did not seem obvious that it would take a most unusual and compelling set of circumstances for a member of the cabinet to tell the Audit Office that the Cabinet had been acting unconstitutionally for more than a decade!

Another interesting feature of the Deodat Sharma/Mrs. Geetangali Singh Audit Office is the failure to delve into transactions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of undisclosed and unaccounted funds across the ministries. The Audit Office has never, never commented on the annual sum of $100 million allocated to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports for arts and sports development. Had it not been for the fact that this column has regularly criticised this annual allocation by the National Assembly in the Estimates, I would have suggested that, bad as it is, the Audit Office is unaware of the existence of the Fund. That they must have been aware of it points to a more serious matter: that they are complicit in hiding from taxpayers any information on how the $100 million per year is spent reportedly under the direction and control of no more than two individuals.

Creative financing
In 2010 it became clear that the Minister of Finance was using the dormant accounts to plug the National Budget, again revealed in the most bizarre language from the Audit Office. We learnt from the 2009 Audit Report that two accounts No. 201210 and No. 201360 with balances of more than $3.2 billion dollars “were closed in July 2010”. It was not until one turned to Note 2 to the 2010 Accounts that we learnt that $30 billion held in a number of dormant accounts in the 2000 Series Bank Accounts were transferred to the Consolidated Fund in July 2010. Yet, the 2009 Audit Report mentioned without comment only the two inactive accounts (No. 201210 and No. 201360) of nine accounts being closed in July 2010 – an interesting omission indeed. While there is nothing fundamentally incorrect in transferring these balances formally into the Consolidated Fund bank account, the timing seems as good a reason as any for the 2010 Audit Report not only to refer to the closure by a side wind, but for the embargo on the report until after the 2011 elections.

Given the significance of the amounts, a competent auditor would have reported to which account the balances were transferred and addressed the accounting treatment. So with the implicit assurance from the 2009 Audit Report that the creative practice was accepted without any adverse comment, the Finance Minister moved on to even bigger sums. Paragraph 86 of the 2010 Report refers to the sum of $11.117 billion as Miscellaneous Income, the net result it says, “of the ‘closure’ of inactive accounts, and retiring long outstanding obligations in relation to the issuance and redemption of Government Securities.” I doubt whether this accounting treatment is appropriate since these are not new funds. At all times they formed part of the Consolidated Fund since constitutionally there is only one fund and that is the Consolidated Fund with the Contingencies Fund being a sub-fund thereof.

God of small things
The title of the book by the Indian women’s activist Arundhati Roy seems an apt description of the approach of the national Audit office. Instead of addressing these big ticket, big picture issues of principles and risks such as the discretional spending at practically all the Ministries, the Audit Office prefers to report to the nation about a few thousands here and a few thousands there. Instead of reporting on the creative accounting by the Ministry of Finance it tells us that “Log books were not maintained for twelve of the Ministry’s fleet of vehicles, whilst partial submissions were received for five vehicles. In addition, an examination of the log books submitted for the five vehicles revealed that they were not properly written up in that journeys were not always authorised, fuel was seldom recorded, and there was no evidence of supervisory checks”.

Nor does it bother to report that in at least one Ministry one of its official vehicles is used by the daughter of a Minister or that that Ministry also controls and spends as it wishes tens of millions of dollars allocated by the National Assembly. I am sure taxpayers would much prefer to hear about the whereabouts of all the vehicles, tractors, excavators and equipment than about the vehicle log books of a few of them. For many ministries and departments the Report has absolutely no finding including the Office of the President where overseas travel by the President and his entourage is the order of the day and the infamous Ministry of Housing and Water for which there is only a single paragraph of a prior year matter which has not been resolved – the tabling of the 2010 reports for the Guyana Water Inc. and the Central Housing and Planning Authority.

Likes and dislikes
Is Mr. Sharma for real and does not think the circumstances of the payment of four billion dollars to GuySuCo or all the concerns about accountability in this Ministry, both in 2010 and prior years are worth addressing? If he thinks that the laying of annual reports of these entities is so important for the Ministry of Housing why is the tabling of the report of the Guyana Revenue Authority for several years or the annual reports of NICIL by the Minister of Finance who also is the Chairman of NICIL not important? Or, for that matter for the NIS, which is reeling from a loss of $5 billion invested in CLICO by the Jagdeo/Luncheon/Singh triumvirate?

Conversely, the Audit Office seems to have a special liking for the Ministry of Health and the award of contracts to the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation by the Cabinet and the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board for the supply of drugs from India. The national press however gorges on this as red meat to a carnivore ignoring the more fundamental questions as to why the country which has an under-employed High Commission in India cannot facilitate the purchase of the drugs and other medical supplies which the Government pre-finances.

Not in our stars
Another area that receives no attention is the management of the billions of dollars of loans taken by the Government, particularly those for specific purposes, many of which will come up shortly for repayment. The loan schedule appended to the report has some significant errors of both omission and commission with vague dates of repayment such as “5 years following disbursements”. None of the reports of the Public Accounts Committee has ever referred to these appendices and one wonders whether it ever considers them.

The fault lies however not only in our stars but in the composition of the Public Accounts Committee which has largely been poorly constituted. A parliament that faces some of its greatest challenges as it seeks to assert its standing as one of the arms of the state now comprises some of the most inexperienced members I can recall since 1957. There are only a few who stand out as being capable, willing to work hard and with any relevant experience. Thankfully former Finance Minister Carl Greenidge meets those standards and while a couple of the ladies on the PAC during the Ninth Parliament could not be faulted for trying, they were clearly out of their depth.

Good luck
Dr. Ashni Singh as finance minister, and Mr. Deodat Sharma whose lack of a suitable qualification means that he cannot be appointed substantively to the post of Auditor General, have had an easy five years. Dr. Singh was also able to maintain a cordial relationship with the late Winston Murray who was a necessary backup to Ms. Volda Lawrence as PNCR nominated Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee. The more likely person for appointment as Chairperson, Mr. Carl Greenidge has so far not had a good relationship with Dr. Singh and it probably will not get better.

This is an interesting background against which the 2010 report moves for detailed consideration by the PAC, a standing committee of the National Assembly. In the past, members like Bibi Shadick have used the PPP/C majority on the Committee to influence the areas for consideration and emphasis. This Committee will now comprise only nine persons and with the PPP/C losing the majority, the Committee is expected to take a far closer look at the report. In the past too, the Committee was deeply influenced by the Auditor General himself and Finance Secretary Mr. Neermal Rekha, as resource persons acting more like prosecutors.

Conclusion
If as is clear, the Report is itself deficient, then the PAC will have to do much more than just look at the report paragraph by paragraph and proceed to “blast” the unfortunate officer sent to defend the Budget Agency on the limited findings and recommendations contained in the Report. The Committee should be insisting on time frames to be given to implementing the recommendations made year after year. They should also be asking the Auditor General why over a five-year cycle he has not found it necessary or possible to audit the various funds and entities which are allocated huge sums each year but for which there is no accounting to the public.
Most importantly the PAC needs to have financial and technical resources at its disposal rather than rely entirely on the erratic attendance of part-time members supported by a couple of individuals with their own interests to protect.

Within the existing construct, the PAC cannot properly carry out the functions required of an oversight body to which the nation looks for proper accounting of state funds. It must use the existing composition of the National Assembly and itself to fix the structural problems inhibiting its scope.