Editorial | No basis to delay NWA report

If the logic of the deputy Speaker, Juliet Holness, rolls over to tomorrow’s sitting of Parliament, the auditor general’s (AuG) special report on aspects of the National Works Agency (NWA) will be tabled.

If it is not, the public will be kept in the dark about the nature of the report for a further several weeks, during Parliament’s annual summer recess. That would not be good and would deepen cynicism among Jamaicans about the country’s governance, while appearing to be a case of Parliament breaking the law of the land. Which, ironically, is what the Speaker of the House, Marisa Dalrymple Philibert, had said she intended not to do.

Further, in the absence of clarification, the developments thus far, particularly last week’s tabling in the House of the AuG’s report on the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA), suggests a difference of opinion between Mrs Holness and Ms Dalrymple Philibert on how on how reports from the auditor general on agencies like the NWA and PICA are to be handled. Unless, that is, Ms Dalrimple Philibert, has changed her mind on the matter and is now at one with Mrs Holness.

In any event, no matter where anyone now stands on the question, it is important and urgent that the attorney general, Derrick McKoy, delivers his opinion that was requested by Speaker Dalrymple Philibert on the matter, and that it be made public.

This issue arose out of Speaker Dalrymple Philibert’s announcement a fortnight ago of her intention to end the Parliament’s practice of immediately tabling all reports for the auditor general, for which she invoked Section 30 of the Financial Administration of Audit Act (FAAA), covering report on public bodies.

The auditor general is a constitutionally established office, charged with the annual audit of government bodies and generally acting as a watchman over state resources.

SPECIAL AUDITS

Apart from these annual audits, the auditor general, on her own volition, or at the request of Parliament, undertakes special audits, which sometimes are deep dives into the actions of managers of state institutions with respect to specific projects or programmes under their purview. These reports used to be tabled in Parliament as a matter of course.

But under the section of the FAAA to which Speaker Dalrymple Philibert says she will adhere, while the reports are to be sent to Parliament, ministers have two months to review and comment on them before they are tabled. If ministers do nothing the reports are to be automatically laid.

“As long as I am here as the Speaker, regardless of what we have practised in this House, whenever it is pointed out to me, or I become aware that what I am doing offends the constitution, the standing orders or any law of the land, then I must disregard the practice and abide by the laws,” Ms Dalrymple-Philibert said of her plan.

At the time, she indicated that three such reports were in abeyance. She identified two as being about PICA and the NWA.

However, those two bodies are executive agencies, which have CEOs and boards and operate outside the normal constraints of ‘public bodies’, which the Public Bodies Management and Accountability Act defines as “a statutory body or authority or any government company, but does not include an executive agency designated under the Executive Agencies Act”.

That notwithstanding, Ms Dalrymple Philibert held her ground against requests that the reports be tabled, saying she would await the attorney general’s opinion.

REPORT TABLED

However, last week, with the Speaker absent from Parliament and her deputy, Mrs Holness in the chair, the report on PICA was tabled. But not the one on the NWA.

While making clear she was absent from Parliament the previous week, Mrs Holness said what she “recalled” was the speaker having a discussion “as it relates to public bodies under Section 30 and not as it relates to executive agencies”. In her case, she received the PICA report, “which is an executive agency and rightly to be tabled as such”.

She could shed no light on the NWA report. “I am operating as Speaker today as I should”, she said.

It is not publicly known what the NWA report contains. The one on PICA vindicated its managers of nepotism and other bad HR and management practices.

However, delaying the publication of the NWA report only fuels people’s speculation that something is amiss, which is worsened by recent assaults by government parliamentarians against the anti-corruption agency, the Integrity Commission, of which the auditor general, Pamela Monroe Ellis, is a member. Ms Monroe Ellis herself has previously come under scorching criticism for work by some government MPs.

As this newspaper previously observed, the managers of public bodies audited by the AuG are allowed to respond to the findings and their views stated in these reports. There is no real reason, therefore, to delay for two months the tabling of these reports when they are sent to Parliament. The law should be changed to reflect this. There is value in transparency.