Civil society groups demand accountability from public bodies, ministries in breach

The Government is expected today to table in Parliament the Estimates of Expenditure along with several Budget-related documents, detailing how more than a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money will be spent in the upcoming financial year.

However, even as the spotlight is on the Budget and government spending, a number of civil society groups are demanding greater accountability from some public bodies and ministries which remain in breach of the Public Bodies Management and Accountability (PBMA) Act. Those breaches result from their failure to submit, to the auditor general, backlogs of appropriation accounts and financial statements.

The discussion arose against the background of Jamaica’s failure to improve on the annual Corruption Perception Index which showed the country in inertia again this year, recording a score of 44 out of 100, where zero means ‘highly corrupt’ and 100 is very clean.

Representatives from several civil society groups who attended the launch of the 2025 CPI results at St Michael’s College in St Andrew on Tuesday, said concrete steps must be made to hold public servants accountable for failing to submit outstanding financial statements and appropriation accounts detailing how huge sums of taxpayers’ money was spent.

CLEAR APPROACH

Jeanette Calder, executive director of the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal, said Section 25 of the PBMA sets out a clear approach to dealing with the heads of public bodies who preside over years of outstanding annual reports and financial statements.

She pointed out that the law indicates that if the court is satisfied, on application by the attorney general, that any person has contravened provisions in the law, including the non-submission of annual reports and audited financial statements, the head of that agency could be ordered to pay a pecuniary penalty not exceeding $1 million.

Noting that public bodies were given an ultimatum by the attorney general in 2014, Calder said notices were sent to 15 heads of agencies giving them a three-month deadline to submit outstanding annual reports and financial statements, failing which they would be dragged before the court.

The anti-corruption campaigner said 14 out of 15 public bodies complied with the notice within the stipulated timeline and the other asked for an extension.

However, Calder said the provision that was utilised by the Attorney General’s Department in 2014 to spur the heads of state bodies into action was never used again.

“It can be done if we have political will,” Calder said, noting that the pressure that had been brought to bear on the heads of delinquent public bodies in 2014 can be revisited to address the current state of affairs in sections of the public sector.

The latest annual report of the Auditor General’s Department revealed that there were 95 outstanding financial statements across municipal corporations.

At the same time, the Ministry of Health and Wellness was still struggling to clear a backlog of appropriation accounts spanning fiscal years 2018-2019 to 2019-2020, with an approved budget of $319 billion. This has prevented the auditor general from reviewing how taxpayers’ money had been spent. Several other public bodies and ministries were found wanting.

CHRONIC PROBLEM

Mickel Jackson, executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, said while civil society groups generally place the spotlight on the political directorate, not enough attention is paid to holding non-elected technocrats to account.

Deacon Ronald Thwaites, principal of St Michael’s College and Seminary, who is a former People’s National Party member of parliament, said strong advocacy is needed to tackle the chronic problem of the non-reporting of vast sums of money expended by ministries, departments and agencies.

“There are large numbers of statutory agencies and government departments who receive, in aggregate, billions of dollars every year and who, for periods in excess of five years, 10 years and some longer than that, fail to report and are placed under no sanction for not having reported,” he said.

He argued that it was that kind of environment that gives rise to corruption.

“We have patent examples of how corruption is allowed to fester by simply ignoring the basic rules of accountability,” he said.

Further, Thwaites questioned which private company would continue to pump huge sums of money into an entity that cannot account for how it spent large sums for the past 10 to 15 years.

Trevor Munroe, founding principal director of the National Integrity Action and UWI professor emeritus, pointed to two public bodies that were the subjects of recent audit reports by the auditor general that outlined backlogs of annual reports.

Munroe said the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management had not submitted its annual report for several years, and that the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) had not submitted its annual reports for the last six years.

In her recent audit of the UHWI, the uditor general said the health facility had not submitted annual reports and audited financial statements for 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, detailing how approximately $65 billion in subventions were used.

According to Munroe, the PBMA provides for prosecution in instances where public bodies violate the law, yet no one has been prosecuted in those “higher places”.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com