St Catherine, Portmore MCs address welfare-spending concerns
... after auditor general questions spending in latest annual report
Published:Friday | January 17, 2025 | 12:09 AMRuddy Mathison/Gleaner Writer
Two municipal corporations, St Catherine and Portmore, have sought to clarify discrepancies in welfare spending highlighted by Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis in a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. The issues arose during audits of their financial records, which identified variances in reported and verified expenditures.
Norman Scott, chairman of the St Catherine Municipal Corporation and mayor of Spanish Town, has attributed the discrepancies to vouchers that were missing during the audit.
“All the documents are in place and available for scrutiny. Because they were not seen at the time of the audit, it triggered what is called an audit query, but all the documents are available to substantiate the expenditure,” Scott told The Gleaner.
The audit revealed a significant variance of $52 million in St Catherine’s welfare spending. Auditors verified $73.5 million in vouchers compared to the $125.5 million reported. The report was made public just days after the municipal corporation was subject to an operation conducted by the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) last Thursday as investigators probed an alleged multimillion-dollar fraud involving staff members.
In Portmore, Deputy Mayor and Chairman of the Finance Committee Alric Campbell explained that the discrepancy resulted from the inclusion of the municipality’s local welfare programme in the audit.
“It should be noted that since the inception of the Portmore City Municipality in 2003, we have always had a local welfare programme where we assist students with back-to-school expenses and social housing for the homeless. So that would seem to be the reason for the discrepancy,” Campbell explained.
He noted that Portmore’s local welfare programme is funded through revenues from building, events, and vending fees, which supplement allocations from the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development.
“The solution to the matter is, from the next budget year, to identify this as the local social-assistance programme, and we will do this,” Campbell said.
Auditors flagged Portmore for a $7.2 million discrepancy, with reported expenditure of $22 million from April 2020 to March 2024 falling short of the verified $29.2 million.
The auditor general’s report examined records from 2017-2018 and 2023-2024 for both municipal corporations. Additionally, the Kingston and St Andrew and St Ann municipal corporations were flagged for failing to provide sufficient information to verify payments.
Both St Catherine and Portmore municipal leaders have emphasised their commitment to transparency and addressing the issues raised by the auditor general.