Saturday, October 10 2009

Minister of Public Utilities Mustapha Abdul-Hamid’s recent referring of the Ministry of Finance audit of the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission’s (TTEC) procurement system to the Attorney General and the Auditor General for a decision appears to imply that he has grounds to believe that further action, suggested by the report, may be necessary.

The audit had examined whether there were any breaches of the rules in the Electricity Commission’s procurement process and/or the award of contracts. For the record the contracts embraced the advanced metering infrastructure, the purchase of poles from a lumber company, the purchase of street lighting arms, the lease of property from Kamus Muffler Works Limited, purchases from Roopnarine Hardware and the street lighting implementation unit.

There can be no doubt that Minister Abdul-Hamid and a team of senior officials of his Ministry had clearly studied the report at length before the Minister took the decision to refer it to the Attorney General. Abdul-Hamid indicated on Wednesday at the post-Cabinet news briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, that the Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Mariano Browne, had written him on July 22 advising that the audit was completed and sent him a copy of the report which he forwarded to the Attorney General by letter dated October 2. It was Abdul-Hamid’s demonstrated concern which had prompted the audit. For as he revealed on Wednesday he had written Minister of Finance, Karen Nunez-Tesheira on October 28 of last year to request that her Ministry’s Central Audit Unit do an audit into TTEC.

Of importance is that the Public Utilities Minister specifically invited the Attorney General’s “review, response and guidance.” What is additionally instructive is that Minister Abdul-Hamid, when asked at the news briefing of the contents of the report, pointedly commented: “Any person where they have been found or determined to be guilty of any improper conduct whatsoever, that is a matter to be determined by the Attorney General’s Office and so we have forwarded the report.” He would add though that the “auditors did not take any definitive position on those matters.”

Abdul-Hamid declared, however, that the Auditor General’s Department was the best authority to determine TTEC’s compliance or otherwise with the tender rules. “TTEC,” the Public Utilities Minister insisted, “is a multi-billion dollar company. There are thousands of transactions that take place and they have the right and responsibility to comment...”

While there may not be any connection at all with the level of the recent increase in electricity rates and any possible additional rise in the cost of the operation of TTEC, as a result of any breaches of tender rules in TTEC’s procurement and/or the award of contracts, should these indeed have taken place, nonetheless the Public Utilities Ministry should seek to set the public’s mind at rest. It would be unfortunate if breaches should have been not only discovered but seen to have impacted, adversely, on the cost of electricity.

It is not enough that the Minister of Public Utilities wrote to the Finance Minister to seek to have her Ministry’s Central Audit Unit pursue an audit into TTEC. He may wish as well to have an audit done with respect to the purchase of buses and spare parts by the Public Transport Service Corporation during the past five years. The nation’s hard earned taxes, whether they are Corporation taxes or Personal Income taxes and Value Added taxes, must be protected.