Wade Mark: EMBD a runaway horse

Meanwhile, the auditing firm PriceWaterCooper is conducting an audit of a $400 million project to build access roads undertaken by the EMBD in 2015.

Chairman of the Public Accounts (Enterprises) Committee (PAEC) Wade Mark described the EMBD yesterday as a runaway horse that needs to be corralled because of lack of oversight on financial accounts.

The accusation was made at a meeting of the PAEC at the Parliament building, Port-of-Spain.

The meeting assessed the financial operations of the EMBD for the period 2008 to 2010.

Among those owed are 31 large contractors (over $35 million), 19 medium contractors (between $12 to $35 million), 65 small contractors (between $2 to $12 million) and 19 micro contractors (less than $2 million).

These include outstanding payments for Voluntary Separation of Employment Package (VSE P) contractors, VSE P consultants, agricultural access roads, fish landing, fence line, road projects, miscellaneous and legal claims.

According to EMBD chairman Shameer Mohammed, Namalco is claiming $1.3 billion is owed to it but the EMBD claims it owes the company $9 million for which a cheque in that sum has been made out as an interim payment. The matter is before the court. He said an internal auditor is expected to hired within the next two weeks.

Senior Audit Analyst in the Ministry of Finance Varuna Ramdial said, “We were not aware there was no internal auditor at the EMBD.” Member David Small questioned the relationship between the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture and EMBD.

The EMBD, it was revealed, has been affected by a high rate of turn over of staff with over 50 percent of the general staff being hired less than a year ago.

It is without a chief executive officer (CEO), a divisional manager — corporate services, and divisional manager — projects. The vacancies are to be advertised over the next four to six weeks, Mohammed said.

The last CEO, he said, was sent on leave to facilitate an audit and his last working day on the job was last Friday. On the audit, Mohammed said PWC was hired to deal with the award of the $400 million contracts awarded to five contractors to build ten by-pass roads in mid 2015.

“The scope of PWC would be to ascertain whether or not there was any fraud, cost overrun, bid-rigging, variations in quality and quantity of works,” he said.

Asked whether the work fell within the EMBD’s remit, he said, “If you have received an instruction from your line ministry to undertake certain works, subject to the respective approvals, be it Cabinet or otherwise, one would have no option but to execute the mandate of the line ministry.” Member Shamfa Cudjoe said the EMBD has a “strong record of recklessness and mismanagement” and based on the reports it was unbelievable that contracts which started at $67 million ended up at $334 million in variations and $66 million evolved into $659 million in variations.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Angela Siew said variations in contracts go to Cabinet for approval. On a 1,000 percent increase in variations in a contract, Siew said with changes in the ministries, inconsistencies might not have been picked up.

Siew, who assumed her current post eight months ago, said it was difficult for the ministry to answer things from the past.

She said the history of EMBD shows that it has been moved around several ministries. From 2002 to 2015 and to the present, it has been under the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Food Production and Marine Affairs, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. It has been under the Ministry of Agriculture since September 2015.