Clock ticks for Health
Ministry faces deadline to say when 11-year appropriation accounts backlog to be cleared
Published:Monday | February 17, 2025 | 10:24 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Errol Greene, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, has been given a deadline of this week to submit to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament a “realistic” timespan for submitting an 11-year backlog of appropriation accounts to the Auditor General’s Department.
Over the 11-year period – 2013-14 to 2023-24 – Parliament approved $829.6 billion of taxpayers’ money, or 10.8 per cent of the national Budget, for the management and administration of the health sector by the ministry.
The instruction was given by PAC Chairman Julian Robinson after Greene, who was appointed permanent secretary last September, could not indicate whether the March 31 deadline to submit the appropriation accounts could be met.
The March 31 target date was previously given by Greene’s predecessor Dunstan Bryan who has since gone off on study leave.
‘Realistic timeframe’
At last week’s PAC meeting, Robinson asked Greene to write the PAC and “give a realistic timeframe” on how long it will take him to complete the appropriation accounts so that the committee can have some benchmark on which to hold him to account.
In December 2023, the accounting officer at the health ministry submitted 15 of the 21 outstanding appropriation accounts for financial year 2013-2014 to 2022-2023. However, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis said the accounts did not meet the standards for submission as set out in Section 8.17.6 (i) and (ii) of the Financial Instructions.
She said the chief audit executive did not sign off on the appropriation accounts report submitted due to material inaccuracies. Additionally, two of the appropriation accounts were not accompanied by the required statement of explanation for cause of variances. As a result, the reports were returned to the ministry for correction and resubmission.
Last week, it was again highlighted during the committee meeting, that senior officers from the ministry are still reluctant to sign off on appropriation accounts owing to unresolved problems that predated their employment at the ministry.
Staff members had sought legal opinions as to whether they should sign off on spending they could not vouch for which took place before they started working with the ministry.
“The reports we got from the ministry were that staff members were reluctant to sign off on that and if that is not resolved I don’t see how you could ever meet March 31st (deadline)?” Robinson questioned.
The permanent secretary said he would follow up with the attorney general to get an opinion on whether the staff members could sign off on the accounts.
However, one committee member was displeased with the manner in which various government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) conducted themselves when they appeared before the PAC.
Dr Morais Guy, who has been a member of the PAC for more than 20 years, said one of the greatest difficulties he faced with MDAs over the years was the commitment given by technocrats to resolve issues flagged by the auditor general only for them to renege on their pledges when they return to Parliament.
“It is troubling and sometimes what I find even more egregious is that some agencies only seek to have the matters discussed or settled a day or week before the sitting of the PAC,” Guy pointed out.
He said when technocrats fail to deliver on commitments made to the PAC it trivialises the work of the committee that has the task of overseeing how taxpayers’ money is spent.
At the same time, Jeanette Calder, executive director of the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP), urged Jamaicans to become more vocal on governance issues, arguing that the country should not only depend of the parliamentarians to provide oversight on government spending.
Speaking last week at the launch of Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Calder contended that parliamentary dysfunction was a major part of why Jamaica had not made progress on this year’s CPI. Jamaica, which has remained stagnant with a score of 44, has slipped four places and is now ranked at 73 out of 180 countries. On CPI’s score, zero means ‘highly corrupt’ and 100 means ‘very clean’.
Calder pointed out that, after the Appropriation Bill (Budget) is passed by Parliament, it then becomes the responsibility of the parliamentarians to oversee government spending for the financial year ahead.
She reasoned that a fundamental way of combating corruption is for lawmakers on both sides of the political divide to demand that appropriation accounts from MDAs are submitted to the auditor general in a timely manner in keeping with the Financial Administration and Audit Act. The JAMP head indicated that when this is done the parliamentarians can ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent in accordance with the allocations that are made in the Budget.