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by pltm
(PLTM) - Auditor General (AG) Sonia Webster has questioned the reason why Sir Geoffrey Cox QC, who is representing the Attorney General in the ongoing UK backed Commission of Inquiry (CoI), was so focused on the Neighborhood Partnership Project that was spare headed by clergyman Claude Skelton Cline via his firm – Claude Ottley Consulting Limited in 2008.
This project was done under the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) administration and the Ministry of Education which was headed by current Premier and Minister of Finance Hon. Andrew Fahie. A scathing report which was produced by the Auditor General on the project was leaked in 2011 and then in 2019.
The report said the contract was to coordinate and mobilise churches, schools and other community groups and organisations to provide assistance and guidance to the vulnerable youth in the territory. The programme ran from 2009 to 2010 under the VIP regime and was a major controversy. The sum of $571,800 was paid out in total.
During her late afternoon appearance, on Wednesday, October 20, Sir Geoffrey pointed out to Webster that this report was not tabled in the House of Assembly nor was it in any Cabinet paper, nor published on the Auditor General’s Office website until recently yet there were two leaks of this particular report to the press, at the end of 2011 and again in 2019.
She replied that her office had a website, but the individual responsible for managing it had left the territory, so they were unable to publish the report. However, it was published on their website earlier this year for the first time.
“It had not been issued by the Ministry officially, and it had not been published by me,” she said.
“You had Ms. Webster, some scathing things to say about this project. You mentioned that the programme was so blatantly false, so blatantly wrong, you said we couldn’t sit on it,” Cox said based on the transcripts of her previous appearance before the CoI.
He continued quoting her, “we can’t just leave it on the sides of our desks, and you pointed out various other matters that concerned you about it, and my question to you is, given that importance … did you ever inquire why the minister or of the ministry why they had not table it as it was their legal obligation to do?”
She replied: “Sir, my job is to do the audit, complete the report, pass it on to the ministry, and then their job commences there. It is their job to take the report forward, and I am not going to take any responsibility for the fact that they did not take the report forward.”
He further asked her if she inquired from the Ministry of Education’s Permanent Secretary Dr. Marcia Potter if she intended to put the report forward or use it internally.
She added: “The Permanent Secretary knows what to do with an audit report, sir.”
I have Things To do
Cox then asked her, “Why did you not take steps to publish or to draw it to the public’s attention in 2012, 2013, 2014 …2019?” she replied that they had it up on their website, and she said they were also engaged with other audits.
A seemingly irritated Auditor General replied: “I am not sitting in my office wondering what’s happening with the NPP report; I am not! I have other things to do!”
Cox said: “But this was a very controversial report, was it not?”
She replied: “all of them are very controversial, and I am not seeing why you are focused on this one! Because they are all very controversial.”
He then insisted on the reason why the report was only published on her website this year.
“I did not have the means to publish it at that time. We have a website now, and that report along with others have been put on the website,” she said.
