Ahead of the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition, Jamale Pringle, who also chairs the PAC, said that it may be necessary for the Parliamentary Standing Orders to be amended to allow the committee to function effectively.
During a recent interview with Observer media’s Dave Lester Payne, the All Saints East and St Luke MP spoke about the meeting set for 2pm yesterday and some of the challenges plaguing the committee.
As a creature of the Antigua and Barbuda Constitution, the (PAC) is charged with reviewing the public accounts of the government, submitting a report detailing the reasons for any unauthorised expenditure of public funds and any measures it considers necessary to ensure that public funds are properly spent.
Pringle said that there has been across administrations a general lack of understanding of how the PAC should function going back at least since 2002.
“The Public Accounts Committee has been a challenge since before the Honourable Baldwin Spencer took office … there are audited statements, but again [haven’t been] reviewed by the Public Accounts Committee; Lester Bird didn’t do it, Gaston Browne only had one or two meetings in his tenure.
“There wasn’t any clear idea as to how it functions, but what I was able to do [is] to bring some young people together who have that financial background, who would have majored in auditing and accounting to look at these accounts and to work with the committee,” Pringle explained.
He added that St Phillip’s South MP Sherfield Bowen has been named as an advisor to the PAC chair to help in holding the government accountable for its finances.
Pringle said that the Parliament may need to specify how the PAC should function in the Standing Orders, the form of powers it has to help it function and look at increasing the number of staff that the committee can employ to help it undertake its work.
“One of the things we must look at is to amend the standing orders for the House of Representatives because I think a portion of that committee’s function were omitted for some reason or the other.
“I believe it was an oversight and one of the things that I’ll be asking for is for us to have that corrected,” Pringle noted.
A more active Public Accounts Committee would lead to greater accountability and transparency in Antigua and Barbuda—at least according to the Director of Audit, Dean Evanson.
And with jurisdictions such as Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago among others having strong public account committee operations, the small size of the country’s Parliament has often meant that the PAC, which requires a number of government MPs—many of whom also serve as Cabinet ministers—cannot effectively do the work of reviewing public accounts efficiently.
“Although we are going to do the work that is necessary, it is not going to be end all, because it doesn’t answer all the questions that are there; for example, how much has been spent on the Alfa Nero, what is the situation with National Housing; these are things that we want to know,” Pringle said.
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