Editorial | What the auditor general found

Prime Minister Andrew Holness should perhaps be forgiven if he is overly sensitive at this time to perceived criticisms, especially from official oversight bodies, as Jamaica draws close to a general election.

Mr Holness, however, has to be careful of misinterpretations, over-reactions and gratuitous insults, which is how many people may characterise his response last week to a report by the auditor general, Pamela Monroe Ellis, into the management of several social welfare programmes, including a couple for housing that fall under the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation (MEGJC), for which he is the substantive minister.

One of these initiatives is the New Social Housing (NSHP) programme, launched by Mr Holness in 2018 to fast-track homes for people in dire circumstances, at whose handover the prime minister is frequently highlighted, sometimes with opposition politicians.

Mr Holness regularly makes the point at these ceremonies of an absence of partisanship in determining who receives these homes, that it is based on merit, and that the project is subject to the highest level of integrity. And there has been, insofar as this newspaper is aware, no claim of impropriety, with respect to the NSHP, or other social housing schemes in the prime minister’s ministry.

Which was neither the claim made by, or the finding of, auditor general (AuG) special audit. Moreover, Ms Monroe Ellis made clear that her office didn’t question the government’s policy objectives “on the distribution of social benefits”.

Rather, its intent was to “examine the management of Government social benefit programmes” to determine their administrative effectiveness in light of the mandate of government’s Vision 2030 strategy “to create and sustain an effective, transparent and objective system for delivering social benefits”.

This is what the auditor general reported: “We found that the various social programmes had similar objectives and overlapping functions, covering parts or the same areas of interest, with little coordination in the distribution of said benefit.

“For example, the distribution of housing-related benefits started with the poor relief MLGCD (Ministry of Local Government and Community Development). The government subsequently developed the rehabilitation programme under the MLSS (Ministry of Labour and Social Security) and the Social Housing programme under MEGJC (formerly the ministry of Housing).

“The poor relief housing and rehabilitation programmes administered MLGCD and the MLSS housing rental and home repair grants to individuals. Similarly the government introduced the Social Housing programme under MEGJC and the Municipal Social Assistance (MSA) programme under MLGCD to provide home repair grants, like poor relief housing and rehabilitation programmes, as well as housing units.

“Home repair grants are also provided through the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) under the OPM (Office of the Prime Minister). Further, in 2019, the government introduced the New Social Housing (NSHP) programme, similar to the SHP.

“Of note, the SHP and the NSHP are concurrently administered by separate units within the MEGJC.”

NO SPECIFICALLY ADVERSE FINDING

The auditor general made no specifically adverse finding against the NSHP, although reporting has highlighted its allocation of J$3.44 of since the 2018/19 fiscal year, which is over 60 per cent than was budgeted for the other social housing schemes.

However, at the presentation of a NSHP home in western Jamaica of the island, Prime Minister Holness responded to the report by saying: “There is a saying by a wise philosopher, ‘never put down to malice what could be put down to ignorance and incompetence’. I don’t know why this finding would be levied against a programme that is delivering well-needed benefits to the people of Jamaica.”

He repeated his argument of the robust management of the NSHP scheme and other social welfare programmes, adding: “This notion that somehow the public interest is being defeated by there being multiple windows is absolute nonsense… I wish to point out that not because there are multiple windows to access a benefit it doesn’t mean that there is duplication or inefficiency.”

There was backend integration and collaboration and “robust checking”, the prime minister said, suggesting the multiple arrangements provided for flexibility.

For instance, he argued, while someone might receive, say, a J$50,000 benefit via the CDF (a programme in which J$20 million is allocated to parliamentarians for spending in their constituencies), for house repair, that might be insufficient for their overall needs. So the person might access an additional benefit from another scheme.

For this newspaper, the CDF is an exceedingly bad example. The programme perpetuates the ideal entrenched in the lurid norm of Jamaican politics of patronage, allowing MPs to use taxpayers money to parade themselves as paternal benefactors.

While, unsurprisingly, it is one of the few programmes that has genuine bipartisan support among parliamentarians, we repeat our call for its immediate scrapping.

Which pivots to the central argument of the auditor general’s report – the need for a modern, efficient, well-managed and efficient and transparent arrangement for the delivery of social welfare.

Indeed, that was the strategic direction agreed on two decades ago, under a Social Safety Net Reform Programme, which should have started with a new overarching legislation, the National Assistance Act, that would capture most programmes.

A bill was in fact drafted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, but as was observed by the auditor general, two decades “efforts to complete the National Assistance Bill did not progress”.

“Therefore, Jamaica does not have a comprehensive, overarching legislation governing the administration of social welfare,” Ms Monroe Ellis said.

At the start of the exercise, a World Bank report quoted by the auditor general countries with too many and insufficiently large welfare programmes tend to find the schemes “overlap and are not sufficiently coordinated to achieve the best possible synergies”. Which is what the auditor general discovered, including the fact that there was no common information management system for the schemes and in some cases, accountability was lax and management/operational expenses gobbled up a substantial portion of the allocation.

The bottomline: what the auditor general report is about is streamlining government for greater efficiency, a long-standing project which the former finance minister, Nigel Clarke, used to tout often, claiming great progress was being made.