Councillor upset about audit delay

A Port of Spain (POS) councillor publicly expressed his upset to the corporation's CEO at a nine-month delay in executing an audit of the body's development fund, speaking at yesterday’s statutory meeting of the POS City Council at City Hall.

Belmont North and West Councillor Akil Durham who heads the Finance, Planning and Resource Allocation Committee directed his remarks to CEO Annette Seaforth. He said three internal audits are outstanding, most important of which was one of the corporation’s account at the Central Bank by which the Government funds the corporation’s development activities.

The councillor said the Municipal Corporation Act says councils can only be directed by the minister of local government not be any public servant.

Durham said the delays in audits have occurred despite the council approving the hiring of extra audit staff to help clear any existing backlog. He was unimpressed at Seaforth’s email to councillors just before yesterday’s meeting, which he viewed as a blanket statement of excuse that councillors had been getting for the past nine months and that he hoped they would not to continue to receive in 2019. Seaforth told the meeting the matter would be addressed at the next Finance Committee meeting. She said she had some difficulty getting audit staff and was seeking help from the ministry.

Durham later told Newsday, “We can’t start our development projects if we don’t know how much money we have. It’s pretty frustrating. Citizens are asking us to do something but public servants are dragging their feet.” He recalled that since his taking office, nobody had ever been able to tell him when the last audit was done on the development account. “We are thinking this could be the first,” Durham said.