PSU President Challenges AG: “How Many Complaints Have You Made?” 

President of the Public Service Union (PSU), Dean Flowers, is challenging Auditor General Maria Rodriguez to open up about what action she has taken against public officers accused of destroying or withholding government records.

Flowers raised the issue at Tuesday’s National Trade Union Congress of Belize press conference, after Rodriguez appeared on the Open Your Eyes last Thursday and said that her office has encountered serious problems with government record keeping, including missing and damaged documents.

Rodriguez called the problem “systematic,” with ministries struggling to preserve years of records while her office faces a backlog in auditing government finances.

“The documentation process or the recording keeping process is not a good one in the government system at this point,” Rodriguez said on August 13th. “Ten years records take up a lot of space. So, ministries are running out of space to put there records and keep their records, so by the time we reach it will be in a storeroom with no light, with no AC and the records get damaged. There is mold.” 

The Auditor General’s office is currently working to clear the backlog, with the latest submitted annual audit report dating back to 2017-2018.

She also said auditors sometimes request original documents because copies can be manipulated, and her office has seen instances where “the photocopy says something and the original says something else,” she said. “So it is important to get primary information.”

But Flowers questioned whether Rodriguez is using the powers available to her under the Finance and Audit Reform Act (FARA) when public officers obstruct the Auditor General’s work or mishandle official records.

Flowers pointed to Section 13(4) of the Finance and Audit Reform Act, which he says gives Rodriguez the authority to file complaints directly against public officers. 

“It empowers her to make complaints to the relevant commission,” Flowers said. “How many complaints have Maria Rodriguez laid before the Public Service Commission for those public officers to be sent home. How many complaints have Maria Rodriguez made to the Director of Public Prosecution under the Criminal Code or any other law, as the FARA says, for people to be charged and prosecuted.” 

For PSU’s leader, however, it remains being a question of: when auditors identify wrongdoing, how much action is actually being taken against those responsible?