Senator for Business Sector Looked At Under-Spending in Budget

Kevin Herrera

Senator Kevin Herrera, who represents the business sector, began his presentation by asking that government audits be completed and shared with the public. On the actual budget, the parliamentarian pointed to some under-spending of monies that were allocated to be spent. He said that there are many reasons why monies are over-budgeted and under-spent, but maybe an audit is necessary to determine what happened in this regard. Senator Herrera also focused on salaries and emoluments for public officers and suggested that it would be smarter to hire more people when they are needed instead of paying the huge amounts we do for overtime. This would ensure that there is value for the monies that are being spent.

Kevin Herrera, Senator, Business Sector

“Salaries are five point six million, but alarmingly over time is two point three million. It’s almost half of salaries. This part of it really doesn’t make much sense to me, Madam President because I’m saying that why we didn’t spend half of total salaries and overtime? It would seem to me that it would be much smarter to hire some more people, to hire some more people if they’re that needed and then stagger the scheduling of those individual individuals over there. I mean, we do that in the private sector all the time – a shift system. And so I’m saying that, you know, I think we could do a lot better in this regard, Madam President to ensure that we’re giving value for taxpayers dollars. Last year Madam President, we had, I believe, four supplementaries. Was it four or three? I I think it was four, yeah for a hundred and eighty million dollars. And when you look at the overspending in some of these ministries, you see why the need for some of that. But then again, there was also under spending in some of the ministries, and so I’m saying that perhaps we didn’t have to come to the House and Senate for the entire hundred and eighty million if we would’ve noted that some of these ministries were under-spending the way they were and moving that money from there to other line items. Perhaps it could have limited the amount we needed to pass in the House and Senate, but also from an under-spending standpoint, Madam President, is that those areas, and I don’t want to say we over budgeted, but they were just, they were, I prefer to say they were on the spent, because I’m sure when the budgets were presented, there was, there were needs that were identified. But irrespective, those could have been monies that we could have put to the capitol two.”