PERMANENT secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) Dunstan Bryan has been told by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to seek an opinion from the Attorney General’s Department regarding employees who are unwilling to sign-off on vouchers that pre-date their time at the ministry.

Until the vouchers, numbering more than 500 over more than 10 years, are certified, the appropriation accounts of the ministry will remain flagged by the Auditor General’s Department all the way back to 2012. Since that time, the ministry has not submitted an annual report to Parliament, a requirement of the Financial Administration and Audit Act (FAA). The Act stipulates that accounting officers, in this case Bryan, must submit to the minister and auditor general the appropriation accounts of expenditure for each financial year within four months of the end of a financial year.

During the period under review — 2012/13-2022/23 — nearly $700 billion has been allocated to the MOHW and 39 statements were outstanding. In the absence of the expenditure accounts, the auditor general is unable to certify how the money was spent.

When he appeared before the PAC on Tuesday, Bryan told committee members that the MOHW had signed off on the Government chemist’s office and the Bellevue Hospital, which fall under the ministry. He also said he had accepted the findings of the Auditor General’s Department that the delayed statements were a breach of the FAA and must be remedied. He provided an update on a “special assignment that has been rolled out by the ministry to clear the backlog and bring the ministry into compliance”.

Bryan said that work started in October 2022 and continued to May 2023 and further to January 2024. As at June 30, 2024, the ministry’s internal audit unit has been provided with 33 of the 39 statements, providing a verification check on all 33. However, 26 of those statements were returned for errors and corrections. This means only seven statements were certified by the internal audit unit.

Bryan said the ministry undertook a comprehensive root-cause analysis to determine the best way forward to remediate the challenges identified.

There were two major sticking points.

The first was an issue with the financial software, the Financial Management (Fin-Man) software, which Bryan described as a legacy system which was replaced by the Government Financial Management Information System (GFMIS). The permanent secretary said that the Fin-Man was not centralised and was not web-based and as such, updates had to be manually uploaded to servers that are maintained by the host. Bryan said the assessment showed that errors in the reports created by Fin-Man included financial years 2013-2018.

“These errors included, but is not limited to, missing data from general ledger control accounts, appropriation in aid expenditure source of funds not displayed on the appropriation accounts of the ministry and, limitation in access to financial management server for multiple users due to legacy issues,” Bryan explained.

The second issue has to do with the certification of payment vouchers. All vouchers must be signed off by the responsible officers for the transaction to proceed.

As Bryan told the committee, “in some instances, vouchers may not be signed because of oversight, or improper checking procedures”.

He said: “In conducting this 10-year backlog project the team identified some 1,340 vouchers that were not properly validated due to lack of authorising signatures at the different levels. Given this issue, and given the lapse in time, the ministry undertook a process of finding officers who were still employed in the ministry but in different positions, still in the wider Government service, or those who were no longer in service, retired, but were available in country… in an effort to complete the authorisation process of the payment vouchers.”

Bryan said that through this method the ministry was able to sign 800 vouchers, leaving 540 outstanding. He said the MOHW, having exhausted efforts to locate officers, in January asked current employees performing the duties of preparers, certifiers and authorisers, to sign on the payment vouchers.

“The officers were uncomfortable in complying with the request,” Bryan said.

The permanent secretary told the PAC that on March 26, the MOWH wrote to the Ministry of Finance seeking guidance on how to proceed on the matter. The finance ministry responded on June 20 outlining how officers can manage the process, however, Bryan admitted that officers “are still apprehensive and have asked that they be advised independently”.

Bryan highlighted that the ministry signs off on 14,000 vouchers each month, noting that those still awaiting a signature represent less than one per cent of the amount. He also pointed to the 10-year period during which the outstanding vouchers were accumulated.

PAC members expressed their understanding of the reluctance of the employees to sign the vouchers, with Opposition member Morais Guy pointing out that any sanction levelled against them could not only affect their reputation, but could also impact their salary and pension in the event a surcharge is applied against them.

Dwight Sibbles suggested that it was a matter for the MOHW and the Finance Ministry to resolve rather than a legal matter.

However, PAC Chairman Julian Robinson disagreed.

He told Bryan that, “given the backlog that you have, and the reluctance right now of the officers to sign off on these accounts and the need to ensure that we have those appropriation accounts, I do think that they need to be properly advised. They have asked for it and from just my cursory reading of the documents, I would support them. They need to be properly advised and then have a discussion maybe at the level of permanent secretaries about how we treat with this.

“I would recommend that you still seek that advice [from the Attorney General’s Department] to ensure that you’re covered and the officers are also covered”.