PAC to question JUTC heads on adverse audit findings
Mentioned
Analysis
The article describes adverse Auditor General findings for the state-owned Jamaica Urban Transit Company, including fuel shortages and obsolete spare parts, and details a Public Accounts Committee appearance to question JUTC management. This is directly connected to government accountability and audit-based scrutiny of public entities.
Full Article
THE management of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) is scheduled to appear at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at Gordon House today to answer questions about the adverse findings of an auditor general (AG) report on the entity’s performance between 2014 and 2019.
According to the audit report, which went to Parliament in July last year, ridership with the state-owned bus company dropped by 36.5 per cent over the five years, and there was an 11.6 per cent decline in available bus service during the period. Furthermore, the investigation uncovered a net accumulated shortage of more than 231,222 litres of fuel valued at some $36.5 million. There were also $178.7 million worth of obsolete spare parts at the end of 2018/19.
Last week, at a meeting of the PAC, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis said that no reason had been proffered by the JUTC, up to that point, for failure to provide a response to the report.
Committee Chairman Julian Robinson, Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Eastern, said he was concerned that the JUTC had not responded in over six months.“This gives me even greater concern that they need to be here to answer the questions. If the AG has completed a report from July, and has asked for a response and six months later we can’t get a response, that is a red flag for me.”
TheJamaica Observerunderstood that the JUTC’s response was submitted yesterday.
Monroe Ellis noted in the audit report that an analytical review of the JUTC’s financial statements over the period 2009/10 to 2012/13, which was tabled in 2015, revealed a consistent fall in ridership and associated decline in revenue. “An attempt to reassess JUTC’s performance through a five-year financial statement trend analysis was thwarted owing to the absence of financial statements for the period 2017/18 and 2018/19,” she noted.
The performance audit was commissioned to determine the root cause of the reduction in the use of the service provided by the JUTC over the years, and sought to determine whether the company had adequate internal controls to enable operational efficiency.
Related Articles
Auditor general maintains RADA breached procurement rules
AUDITOR General Pamela Monroe Ellis is standing by findings of a performance management audit of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) that the agency breached procurement guidelines, based on investigations carried out by her office, on its management of the Farm Road Rehabilitation Programme (FRRP) from 2014 to 2019. According to the findings of the report, which was tabled in Parliament in October, the authority’s process of selecting contractors was not always transparent or competitive.…
House clerk blames robbery for fleet breach
Weeks after the auditor general reported that a parliamentary fleet vehicle was kept off-site on 173 occasions, the clerk to the Houses of Parliament has disclosed that the arrangement stemmed from a late-night robbery of the employee at the centre of the probe, saying verbal permission was granted in “extenuating circumstances” to ensure his safety. The disclosure came during Tuesday’s sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), as Chairman Julian Robinson pressed for clarity on one of the report’s most contentious findings: the lack of documented approval for the overnight retention of a Government vehicle, even as the audit pointed to sustained off-site use.…
PAC raps labour ministry over non-response to weaknesses identified by audit
THE chief accountable officer in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS) found herself under sustained fire yesterday as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sought to get to the bottom of the reasons for the ministry’s non-response to 60 systematic weaknesses identified by internal auditors over several years. This issue and others were flagged in the auditor general’s annual report on the financial transactions of the Government for the 2019-20 financial year.…
Lack of implementation a stumbling block for NSWMA
AUDITOR General Pamela Monroe Ellis says the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) has a number of strategies on paper that could improve its waste management activities and income but lack of implementation has been a stumbling block to those goals. She also noted that her department’s performance audit of the authority was unable to determine the full extent of the resources which the NSWMA needs because the information was not readily available: “We are of the view that the full extent of the resources needed is not known, or is not expressed, so whereas we could determine that there were shortages with trucks in other areas, we were not able to determine that,” she explained.…