That Public Accounts Committee

The Public Accounts Committee has been making the rounds a lot lately, and rightfully so. Members of the government side had abandoned it, citing insufficient rules to govern its functioning. In other words, they said the rules are not there to govern how the committee should function, therefore, they’re not participating. 

However, what exactly is the purpose of the committee and what are its boundaries? Some of the comments I’ve heard were somewhat astonishing. Perhaps it is me whose understanding of the onstitution is lacking. After all it is written in plain English. For example, where does it say that the committee can “drag” any non-member of the committee before it to answer questions about how monies were spent? What grants it that prosecutorial power? Also, where does it say that the committee can dictate that a former parliamentarian be given his pension, as was flamboyantly hot aired on one morning radio programme? Who granted that authority to the committee? 

Chapter 5 of the Constitution, which deals with finance, appears to be written in operational order. Before there can be a Public Accounts Committee, there must be a Director of Audit, and before that, you must address the Public Debt; and so on and so forth, starting with the Consolidated Fund in section 68. 

The last section (76) deals with the Public Accounts Committee; 75 deals with the Director of Audit; and 74 is about the Public Debt and so on, so that if you have a public debt, which the country will have, it shall be audited. After it has been audited, the Accounts Committee follows.

Now, what exactly does section 76 say is the duty of the Public Accounts Committee? Mind you, this entire section covers less than half of a page. Here’s what it says in a nutshell:

1. After every election and a new government administration is sworn in, the new parliament must establish such a committee. This suggests that the committee is for that current administration going forward for the next five years or until the time when the Parliament is dissolved. Remember that after every election, a new administration is formed, possibly with new members, which means a new committee possibly comes with new members as well. 
2. In a cloak of democracy, it is customary for the Parliament to name the Opposition Leader as chair of that committee. It is not mandatory for him or her to be the chair. 
3. Recall that section 75 talks about the Director of Audit. The auditor is supposed to interrogate the accounts of the government and be satisfied that all the monies approved by the Parliament were used appropriately. The audit of all government accounts is supposed to happen at least once a year. Then a report should be provided and submitted to the Minister of Finance. 
4. The Minister of Finance is supposed to then take this report and table it in Parliament within seven days. If the minister fails to do so, then the Director of Audit can submit it to the Speaker of the House.  
5. It is this audit report that the Public Accounts Committee is setup by the Parliament to review, to determine if there were any “bad spending” and the reason for it and report it back to the Parliament. The committee can also make proposals to Parliament for how any bad spending can be avoided.  

Now, unless there are some unwritten rules somewhere else that triumph what is in the Constitution, that, in a nutshell, is the function of the Public Accounts Committee. Essentially, if there is no tabled report, there’s nothing for the committee to do. The committee is made up of members of Parliament, and nothing in this half-paged 76^th section suggests that the committee has prosecutorial powers. 

The Director of Audit on the other hand, is the one who would have access to the “books” and by extension, those who are responsible for them. It makes sense, however, that the Director of Audit is who can summon individuals for questioning about the “books”. Anyone who has ever sat through an audit knows how this works. If you are an accounting clerk or an order entry clerk, the auditor may request to speak with you about an entry that it finds questionable. 

It follows also that if a government wants to, it can stymie the functioning of the Audit Department, though it is an independent office. The government is responsible for allocating resources to this department, so it can make things difficult for it to do its work. By the time it gets around to doing its work, a new administration with new people could be in office.

Having said all that, I share the view that the committee should seek to establish a set of rules to govern how it functions, then seek to call a meeting based on those rules; even if it’s just for political colours. It is said that the latest audit report is a few years old and some of it may be from the spending of this current (2025) administration. It may not get the answers that it seeks from the current members, as some of the spending may be from the previous government administrations whose members are no longer in government. 

Observer 

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