Garbage chief denies corruption probe triggered staff redeployment
Published:Thursday | July 28, 2022 | 12:10 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Audley Gordon, has denied a claim by Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis that two senior employees were transferred to the company’s head office after internal auditors unearthed anomalies at a regional subsidiary of the company in 2020.
An internal audit report of the NSWMA, dated November 2020, stated that 165 cheques written to 154 contractors, totalling $32 million, for desilting works were lodged to two bank accounts belonging to an individual who was not party to these contracts.
Monroe Ellis highlighted in her performance audit report, which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, that following the internal audit review, NSWMA reported the irregularities to the relevant law-enforcement authority and relocated the accountant and procurement officer at its subsidiary, MPM Waste Management Limited, to its head office.
Gordon confirmed that the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) is investigating the matter.
However, when asked about the relocation of staff owing to the apparent anomaly referenced in the auditor general’s report, Gordon said: “I cannot speak to staffing issues publicly like that. We are in an industrially charged climate and I am not going to create a bigger problem for the agency than it currently has.”
When pressed on the issue, Gordon said that he did not know about any transfer or reassignment that was done as a result of information that was now in the public domain.
“I know of no transfer that was done. None! I don’t know of any transfer that was done because of that specific reason,” he insisted.
The NSWMA head declared that in five years, the agency has uncovered “two sets of glaring irregularities and we did not sweep them under the carpet”.
“I want to dispel the notion that the auditor general came down here and discovered something that we already discovered and reported to the police, and the matter is being actively investigated.”
In her audit report, Monroe Ellis said that a review of MPM’s bank statements and cleared cheques revealed that 166 cheques totalling $38.8 million were lodged to the same two bank accounts at the same commercial bank, belonging to the same third-party individual, who was not party to these contracts.
Gordon was asked if the “third-party individual” who was also engaged as a contractor at NSWMA still receives contracts from the agency in the wake of the anomalies being probed by MOCA.
Responding, the NSWMA executive director said: “We operate in Jamaica on a presumption of innocence. We have decided that we would not take any action that could put us in an injurious position where people are concerned, especially where people’s businesses and livelihoods are concerned.”
He said that the agency was “anxiously awaiting the report from MOCA on this matter, so that we can be guided in a fulsome but legal way on how to proceed on this matter”.
In November 2021, the NSWMA reported that a payment system fraud at the entity amounted to $30 million.
The matter involved one of the NSWMA’s regional subsidiaries, MPM Waste Management Limited.
At the time, it was reported that three people, including a senior employee, had been separated from the entity.
MOCA was called in to investigate the matter. However, when asked for an update on the investigations, Gordon indicated that he had no new information on the probe.
On the matter of breaching the environmental law by operating five of its disposal sites without permits, Gordon sought to downplay the issue, noting that the agency was able to secure three permits to date.