Estwick’s say on oversight

Democratic Labour Party president Dr David Estwick believes Barbados does not need to wait for a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) or a substantive Auditor General appointment to begin assessing Government spending.

The former government minister argued yesterday that existing expenditure and revenue estimates already offer a workable, if imperfect, tool for accountability.

Responding to media questions on the prolonged absence of both a functioning PAC and a confirmed Auditor General during a press conference, Estwick said a close reading of the annual Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure allows analysts to track how money is allocated across Government programmes and subcategories, then compare those figures against the following year’s revised estimates to see whether funds were spent, underspent, or overspent.

“You can therefore carry out an evaluation that way,” he said.

“But you will not be able to get, I would say, real-time data.”

That gap, he suggested, is where the Auditor General’s Office should step in, since it has the power to request realtime financial data directly.

However, Estwick suggested that office has instead been consumed by “procedural irregularities”, issues he attributed less to wrongdoing than to weak systems, inadequate tendering procedures, and chronic understaffing across ministries.

“You can have a ministry or department that has a function, but if it needs 15 people to function and you only have five, you cannot upload the data in the time required,” he said, adding that this is where “a lot of the systems break down”.

Asked directly whether the lack of a substantive Auditor General amounted to a failure of the audit system, Estwick pushed back, noting that an acting Auditor General holds full authority to function in the role. The real shortfall, he said, lies in staffing levels needed to audit ministries, statutory corporations and Government-owned private companies alike, a complaint he said the Auditor General’s Office had raised many times. He contrasted that with the state’s willingness to fund other departments. “The Government can find the money to set up every other department around . . . but you can’t find the time and the money to effectively provide the human resource requirements for the Auditor General’s Office.”

Quoting economist Jim Rickards, Estwick said reform must start with an honest accounting of the current system’s flaws: “You can’t replace something with nothing,” he said. (BA)

Party leader Dr David Estwick and his shadow cabinet. (Picture by Sandy Pitt.)