Immigration Minister Complains: Auditors Didn’t Speak to Him

Godwin Hulse

The Special Audit ahead of Friday’s meeting of the House of Representatives remains a hot topic of national importance.  The lengthy report names a number of elected officials and sitting government ministers in the free-for-all.  Senator Godwin Hulse was appointed to the post of Minister of Immigration in 2012; there was still rampant hanky-panky taking place under his watch. Prior to that, the minister was Carlos Perdomo who the audit recommends should have been questioned by the police. Today, we asked Minister Hulse for an interpretation of the findings of the Auditor General.

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Immigration & Police

“The only thing I will say to start with is that I understand that the Auditor General did not comply with what would be a requirement to do a management letter to CEOs and other people.  I personally was never asked by the Auditor General, not a question by any of their people so I can’t comment on that.  My understanding is that they didn’t speak to the C.E.O. of the ministry at the time but apart from that a majority of the things that came out are things that we’ve heard and seen from the Penner situation and some of the things that I myself had undertook to look into.  But I won’t comment on anything specifically until it goes to the House on Friday, when it’s laid on the table and of course subsequently on Wednesday when it goes to the Senate.”

Isani Cayetano

“Based on what is contained in the report, do you feel that this is an indictment of some of the ministers who are named in there?  Just a brief response on that.”

Godwin Hulse

“No, I won’t respond to that until, as I said, we’ve gotten into the details of it.  But what I will say is, you have to remember that when I took charge of the ministry there were some changes that we had to put in fundamentally and I want to highlight those.  One was a nationality committee because we knew there was a lot of mess with nationalities.  The other one was a visa vetting committee because we also knew that there was a lot of mess with visas and the third one was a regularization of the passport situation because we also knew there was a lot of mess with passports including Justices of the Peace signing and all sorts of things.  So we put those things in place as a matter of some kind of controls and remember though that it resides with the people, it resides with you all.  I am yet to see any media publish any name of any citizen who got nationality.  That is now in the gazette.  Those are some of the corrective things we’ve put in the situation so we don’t have an ahuh moment, “you see, so and so got a nationality.”  The whole idea of publishing it and all of that which I introduced in a bill was to prevent some of the very things you are seeing.”