PAC to grill government bean-counters

(CNS): The Public Accounts Committee will be meeting publicly for the first time in several months this morning in order to see where the financial officers are with the country’s outstanding accounts. The auditor general’s report on the current situation has not yet been completed and laid on the table of the Legislative Assembly but Ezzard Miller, chair of the PAC, said the meeting had been called in order to update the committee. He said accountants from ministries and government companies will be called to report where they now are with the backlog of public accounts. It is six years since the Cayman Islands government produced a set of audited financial accounts that could be scrutinised by the public.

The AG is expected to deliver a comprehensive report before the year end, but Miller said he was calling the meeting in order to publicly thank the financial officers that were now up to date with their accounts and to take a more serious position on those that were not. Despite the extra public money injected into the “catch-up” project of the various ministries and other public authorities, a significant number have still not got their accounts up to date.

Check back to CNS later today for a full report from the meeting