The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The speed and urgency with which the COVID-19 Food Distribution Task Force had to be created will likely mean some elements were not executed “in the most efficient or effective way”, a governance reformer argued yesterday.

Matt Aubry, the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s (ORG) executive director, told Tribune Business that both the Government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that comprised the Task Force had to “scale up” to an extent never imagined or conceived of before to feed more than 55,000 Bahamian families after the economy collapsed virtually overnight at the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak.

Speaking after the Prime Minister renewed his assault with the tabling of a 138-page audit of the COVID food assistance initiative in the House of Assembly, which he used to buttress further charges regarding lack of transparency and accountability surrounding the use of $53m in taxpayer monies, the ORG chief said it was important to assess the Task Force’s work against the crisis it was formed to address.

He also questioned how the 138-page audit, by Kershala Albury, president and principal consultant at her own firm, ATI Company Ltd, will dovetail and play out with the Auditor General’s own probe of the COVID food assistance initiative. “It clearly seems like there’s some disconnect in the process,” Mr Aubry told this newspaper.

“It’s not necessarily clear where the Auditor General’s audit comes in. Will that be consistent? Will that present something different? Will it have all the information?” Philip Davis QC has repeatedly complained that the Task Force and its NGO members have failed to provide all necessary records and information to ATI, but multiple sources have pointed out that the Auditor General’s Office has the necessary legal powers to compel compliance and document handover.

Mr Aubry, meanwhile, said the context in which the Task Force was created is important in assessing its performance. “This was an initiative that didn’t have a precedent, and in doing so there will be things I’m sure that were done well and others that need to be sorted out,” he added, ORG having been involved in its creation and structuring.

“I’m sure there were key instances where things were not implemented in the most efficient or effective way because it had never been done before...It was a very quick creation and execution, and it has to be said that the scale of this operation was not typical for any non-profit company in The Bahamas. This was a major scale up for the Government side, a major scale up for the non-profits.”

With hurricane season now looming, Mr Aubry said “the stake is on both sides” to learn vital lessons and understanding from the National Food Distribution Task Force experience so that the Government and NGOs can better partner should a catastrophic weather event strike.

Mr Davis, in his latest attack on the Task Force, said: “Even in the instances where information was provided, only aggregate totals were offered, with none of the supporting documents that would be critical to corroborate the figures. There’s no back-up provided. No contracts, no cheques, no receipts and no bank statements to support the information. No evidence, in other words.

“Given the sums of money involved, the deficiencies are breathtaking. Public officers did not have oversight of the expenditure of funds. Expenditure of millions of dollars remains unexplained and undocumented. No audited financial statements have been provided, so information provided by the NGOs cannot be confirmed.

“Information dashboards presented by the Task Force did not reconcile to the information provided by NGOs. So, for example, just to highlight the point, if the Task Force is saying that they gave an NGO $100,000, and the NGO is saying they only received $80,000, what’s happened to the difference?” he continued.

“In fact, numerous instances have been identified when the NGOs concerned did not account for the total amount funds received from the Government. There was no consistent system of record-keeping at the Task Force or NGO level. And it is simply not credible to believe that from May 2020 to October 2021 they were too busy to keep proper records.”