The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Social Services Minister Melanie Griffin insisted yesterday that concerns highlighted in a recently tabled auditor general's report were "old" and already addressed under the previous Christie administration.

She explained not only was disciplinary action taken where it was recommended, but that a team was established to address issues raised in the report point by point. For these reasons, she questioned the intent and timing of the government tabling of the report in Parliament last week, which she said was also laid in the House of Assembly when she was minister.

Mrs Griffin was speaking of the auditor general's report, which was tabled in the House last Wednesday highlighting that shredding of documents frequently happened to cover up fraudulent activities at the Department of Social Services. It is unclear if this portion of the report is new.

In his audit of the 2014/2015 fiscal year, Auditor General Terrance Bastian warned that "impaired internal controls" and "a severe breakdown" in management oversight had exposed Bahamian taxpayers to the potential loss of millions of dollars from graft and corruption.

It further suggested that the department's weaknesses and failings were also undermining its mission to assist poor and low-income Bahamians.

The report also said the Department of Social Services processed a fictitious invoice from a medical provider, and ended up paying for a non-existent procedure on a dead person. It had some 255 days to check the service was performed, but failed to do so.

Additionally, there was alleged "collusion" between staff at a local food store and Department of Social Services personnel that enabled the latter to use food coupons, intended to help poor and low-income Bahamians, to purchase groceries for themselves.

When she was contacted yesterday, the former minister said the concerns as well as several discrepancies with the report were addressed.

"This not a new report," she told The Tribune. "It was laid in the House while we were still in office and the Ministry of Social Services responded to the report. What recommendations were made by the auditor general we put in place and what we thought was inaccurate in the report we advised them accordingly. So, this report is being published like it is something new."

She continued: "To me it speaks to what is the intent and timing of it because, like I say, it's an old report One of the reasons why we moved to the prepaid (debit) card was because it was less open to fraud and so social services took many steps to deal with the issues in that report."

She admitted that she could not remember every step taken to correct the issues, but recalled recommendations were taken into account.

"They spoke about how someone had died and the doctor was paid but the fact that what happened was the length of time between processing was quite long and so we tried to reduce that and so there were issues that came up in the report that we dealt with and these were no issues that were by any one administration."

As for disciplinary action against employees who used vouchers and orchestrated shredding, Mrs Griffin said: "The fact of the matter is whenever it was deemed disciplinary action should have been taken, we took it."

The report described the document shredding as intolerable, adding the loss of accounting records could undermine the integrity of the accounts department and increase the risk of fraud and corruption to the organisation as a whole.

The auditor general's report also noted that 14 medical batch files, and other items, were missing after a cleaner was instructed to "clean out a staff member's desk" and place the contents into a black garbage bag to be handed to the department's human resources unit. The person who made the request was later placed on administrative leave.