EDITORIAL - Was JDIP a case of deliberate ignorance?

The law that set up the Road Maintenance Fund (RMF) may not have given its specific control to the finance ministry. But the spirit of the Financial Administration and Audit Act (FAAA), whose amendment Audley Shaw spearheaded with much chest-thumping, insisted that the finance minister pay attention.

The changes to the FAAA, Mr Shaw was wont to broadcast, would bring probity and accountability to the government finances after a period of recklessness by the past administration.

Mr Shaw now has serious questions to answer.

The RMF was the vehicle used by the Government to borrow more than $40 billion to finance the Palisadoes shoreline rehabilitation, as well as the Government's flagship road maintenance and construction project, for whose mismanagement Prime Minister Andrew Holness sacked the head of the National Works Agency (NWA), Patrick Wong, and wrested the scheme from his transport minister, Mike Henry.

For these first steps at probity in the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) and advancing the interests of taxpayers, Mr Holness is to be commended.

It is to be noted, however, that the action of the new PM was not the outcome of vigilance by the finance ministry. Rather, it was the result of the professional courage of Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis, whose special report on JDIP highlighted managerial malfeasance that ignited public outrage.

Minister Shaw's unfortunate response to the auditor general's findings was not to outline a programme for protecting the public purse. He played childish tit-for-tat by contrasting the problems of JDIP to projects that were presumed to have been mismanaged by the past administration.

Yet, the $42-billion loan from the Chinese for JDIP and Palisadoes may have been formally borrowed by RMF, but it is a contingent liability of the Government that has substantially increased the country's debt. Further, the RMF has said that it can ill-afford to service the loan, which means that Mr Shaw will have to pay from the Consolidated Fund, whose authority of the FAAA is without question.

New era of accountability

Of course, the failure of prudent oversight of JDIP, with its big swirling budget, was not only by the finance ministry.

For while the NWA was the implementing agency, the Ministry of Transport and Works was ultimately responsible. It was on its behalf that the NWA operated, but the ministry, as Mrs Monroe Ellis noted, was not "mindful of its fiduciary responsibility to ensure that the Government and, by extension, taxpayers obtain value for every dollar spent".

In that context, the position of Dr Alwin Hales, the ministry's permanent secretary and chief accounting officer, is untenable. He should go.

Mr Henry should give, irrevocably, his resignation to the prime minister, taking responsibility for what happened on his watch, especially on a project for which he assumed proprietorship.

The Cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, Douglas Saunders, too, deserves a reprimand. In the face of the public complaints over JDIP, he should have insisted on accountability from his civil-service subordinates.

Maybe it was that Minister Henry was too powerful in the Cabinet and his party to be called to account. The constraints may not be now as onerous on the new PM, who is attempting to construct a new image for the Government. We expect sanctions for infractions and a new era of accountability.