SJMC CEO makes plea for tools needed to help municipalities update financial statements
Published:Friday | July 26, 2024 | 12:09 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Parliamentary Reporter
Chief executive officer (CEO) of the St James Municipal Corporation (SJMC) Naudia Crosskill on Wednesday appealled to the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service to provide the necessary resources to assist the municipalities in getting their financial statements up to date.
Crosskill and the CEOs of the other 13 municipalities appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament on Wednesday to provide responses to the plethora of outstanding financial statements that are yet to be submitted to the Auditor General’s Department (AuGD).
Commenting on some of the challenges facing the municipal corporations (mc), Crosskill said the physical spaces at some of the municipalities do not allow them to store documents properly.
She said some MCs have to store information manually and it poses a significant challenge to retrieve them. She also blamed delays in the retrieval of information for the financial statements on damage to servers at two municipal corporations.
The SJMC CEO noted that the finance ministry allocated resources to establish a special unit at the AuGD to work on the backlog of financial statements submitted by municipalities.
“I believe provision should have been made in the budget to support the local authorities to get these financial statements up to date,” she argued.
Deputy Financial Secretary Hope Blake told PAC members that the Ministry of Finance has been working with the Ministry of Local Government to address the issues relating to the backlog of financial statements.
She said a structure has been sent from April this year to the permanent secretary in the local government ministry for the municipalities. “That structure would include an accountant and some other positions for the municipalities,” she said.
Blake noted that Permanent Secretary Marsha Henry-Martin had submitted a restructuring plan for the local government ministry which includes a project unit that would provide support to the municipalities.
With only one outstanding financial statement for the Manchester MC, committee member Dr Morais Guy queried, “What is it that Manchester has done that the others have failed to do in terms of getting the financial statements to the stage where they can be submitted to the auditor general’s department?”
ADJUSTMENTS
Several of the MCs that submitted deadlines to complete their outstanding financial statements had to make adjustments for various reasons.
During Wednesday’s meeting, it was revealed that the outstanding financial statements had declined from 81 to 77 with four being submitted to the AuGD in recent times.
At the same time, Marlon McAdam, deputy auditor general, had disclosed to the PAC that of the 44 opinions issued by the auditor general in relation to financial statements submitted by municipal corporations, 38 (or 86 per cent) of them are disclaimers. The disclaimers were issued for failure by the municipalities to provide supporting documents to corroborate the figures that are in the financial statements.
The issuance of a disclaimer means that the AuGD cannot form an opinion on the financial statements submitted because the necessary information and evidence to do so have not been provided.
McAdam said before the auditor general issues an opinion the department has several meetings with the executive leadership of the municipality.
He said that, at the point in which the auditor general is about to finalise the audit, the CEO or chief financial officer is asked to provide the auditors with a letter outlining what the municipality is able to provide and not able to submit.
“So they present us with a letter to say they are not able to provide these records and it is that representation that we use to proceed to say these records are not available,” he added.
Further, the deputy auditor general said the audited financial statements containing the opinions are to be submitted by the minister to the Parliament for tabling.
“We completed the audits, issued the opinions and those statements were sent to the ministry and it is up to the minister to table those statements containing the opinions,” McAdam told PAC members.