PM on comprehensive audits at health institutions

Dean Barrow

You heard earlier about Prime Minister Barrow’s comments on Health C.E.O. Peter Allen. He also touched on the comprehensive audits at the Southern Regional Hospital and the Central Region. But there are reports that other audits in other areas are also highlighting financial irregularities. Barrow says that where audits are concerned it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t because while they actually commission the audits, they are roundly criticized for what is revealed.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The audits are commissioned by the ministry, by the government, precisely because if there wasn’t a suspicion that all was not well, there was a recognition that there was a need to find out. So in a sense, we are being hoist on our petard. You commission audits; nobody will give you any credit for that by way of saying well you are trying to get at whatever is wrong. What they do is give you a stick licking when the audits disclose that in fact public officers and again when they talk about ministerial corruption—fine let us have no argument with that—but please recognise that there is a great deal of civil service corruption and that Auditor General’s report, according to COLA, fingers a ring of public officers. But let us hope that what the audit discloses will mean that every effort will be taken to better police the system in order to avoid the kinds of irregularities and the outright stealing that’s clearly been taking place.”

Central Health Regional Manager, Melinda Guerra, and Southern Regional Hospital Administrator, Nasley Sommerville, are both facing public services commission hearings. Sommerville is on suspension, while Guerra remains in charge of the Central Region.