Editorial | External audit for NSWMA

There are some people who, intuitively, possess extraordinary insights, emotional intelligence, organisational skills and a capacity to absorb and process information, that make them, despite lack of formal training, excellent managers.

Such a combination of gifts is rare. Or, at least not common, especially in highly technical fields, such as engineering or environmental science. Which is why this newspaper’s report on Sunday on the employment practices of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), where staff have been put into jobs for which they did not have close to the required qualifications, demands a broader and deeper investigation by the auditor general.

The situation, at first whiff, suggests a wholesale breach of the government’s hiring regulations, the established guidelines of how public sector agencies should remunerate their staff. Indeed, some might argue that based on the available evidence, NSWMA’s approach reeks of cronyism, similar to scandals that emerged in recent years at the government’s Petrojam oil refinery and the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC).

INTERNAL AUDIT

What, however, is significant about the NSWMA matter is that the revelations are not those of external investigators who acted on the whisperings on disgruntled staff, or the formal complaints of whistleblowers. They are the outcomes of an internal audit, whose fundamentals the NSWMA’s executive director, Audley Gordon, did not reject out of hand, but sought to downplay on the basis:

* that the document was still in draft and that some findings were being disputed;

* there were exaggerations; and

* that the NSWMA has consistently ensured that its managers possessed “requisite skills and competence” and suited the required roles, although it was not clear this meant that they met the stated qualifications for their jobs.

“I am very proud of my team, who have consistently delivered year after year on their performance,” said Mr Gordon, who, pointedly, noted that the draft document had been leaked to the media.

According to Mr Gordon, the internal audit reviewed his agency’s recruitment, promotion and termination process between 2008 and 2026. However, several of the more egregious incidents it flagged appear to have been of relatively recent vintage, occurring during Mr Gordon’s watch. He has been the NSWMA’s executive director since December 2016, having previously held the role of technical officer.

Per The Gleaner’s summary of the audit, in the case of three of the NSWMA’s four regional directors – whose jobs require that they have tertiary education – were in their positions without documented evidence of their qualifications.

This, or course, doesn’t mean that they are unqualified. It, however, implies that the authority’s human resources management system is, at best, sloppy.

But that isn’t the full extent to which the NSWMA’s management and HR system appears to have played fast and loose with taxpayers’ money.

For example, a director’s post, which called for someone with a master’s degree was filled with no academic qualifications. The salary: J$13 million.

Another director’s job, paying J$9.3 million per year and requiring a postgraduate degree, was filled by someone with passes in three subjects in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.

The person who fills another J$13 million a year job that calls for a post-graduate degree, has a first degree listed on their resume, but the qualification wasn’t documented in the NSWMA’s files.

WITHOUT QUALIFICATIONS

At lower levels of the organisation swathes of staff are in jobs without the stated qualifications for the posts, and positions are often filled without being advertised.

Further, there appears to be lack of consistency in where staff is placed on pay scales, and therefore remunerated – qualifications notwithstanding. A senior director with CSEC subjects is placed near the top of the pay band. Further, a senior secretary with a first degree is paid at the highest band in the payscale, while an administrative assistant in another department, with two degrees, is at the bottom of the grade.

There is the audit’s complaint, too, of Mr Gordon authorising all directors who had completed their probations being moved to the top of their salary scales, without any clarity that the move had the imprimatur of the directors and/or the finance ministry. In addition to their higher base salaries, taxpayers’ are on the hook to these directors, the audit pointed out, for “25 per cent of their annual salary as gratuity payment”.

The internal auditors also bemoaned the absence at the NSWMA of a documented policy to guide placement of staff in salary bands, fuelling perceptions of unfairness and favouritism. This should worry the finance ministry and taxpayers.

Mr Gordon may well have rebuttals to the audit’s findings, but the document has already caused disagreements which puts at risk any objective, and therefore a fix. It is the auditor general, who, in matters like these, is the final arbiter – and the protector of taxpayers’ interests.