Friday, June 20, 2014

New Rules At Belize Airport Authority: No More Free Paper Checks

Who can forget the check scandal at the Belize Airport Authority. In December and January, it rocked the Authority - and the shock-waves reached all the way up to cabinet where Minister of State in the Ministry of Transport Edmund Castro was stripped of his civil aviation portfolio. In total 76 checks were released to the media and the explanation we got is that only a few of them were directly linked to Castro - in many of them the board claims to have issued social assistance of its own volition.

But, while it may have been business as usual for any statutory board - the Prime Minister declared it ill-advised and wrong. And so, he sent the board and the General Manager home. The New board and GM have come up with new rules:

A management reporting system, and a strategic plan and tied to a tightly managed budget. The New GM laid out the rules for us today:..

John Waight, General Manager - BAA
"The first thing we did, the board and I in light of what has happened in the past we I guess you could say things were not in the best of taste and we felt that this cannot ever occur again and so we did an organizational assessment, look at all our weaknesses and strengths and so on and then we came up with a number of measures. We thought it best that we create administrative policies, even the board of directors has a manual to be guided by."

Jules Vasquez
"Then you were mentioning also that you wanted to post the financials online."

John Waight
"Right, we are going to create a website, like you read in the papers where the banks put out their financial - basically a balance sheet like that we intend to do that. Better than that you can't get in transparency."

Jules Vasquez
"Now, I want to ask very specific questions; in the past we saw a number of disbursements, checks made for social assistance whether it be scholarships or people in the minister's constituency and these things happen in politics from I'm in journalism from the 90s - these things happen.... minister say boy, I need a little help with my constituency - is that an acceptable practice?"

John Waight
"The policies that we came up with we are going to be guided by that and certainly we don't want to be doing things like what has happened in the past as to say we are repeating it. We cannot just be giving out government's money to politicians or to...."

Jules Vasquez
"But suppose somebody needs scholarship assistance. Is there a fund for that?"

John Waight
"We haven't envisioned that at this time. We have a lot of construction going on we need every bit of our pennies."

Jules Vasquez
"Then we also saw where in the past certain board members, one had a dental bill paid and then it would be reimburse through their allowance."

John Waight
"No more."

Jules Vasquez
"Funerals for the parents of public officials?"

John Waight
"No more. That is done."

Story and photo:    http://www.7newsbelize.com

No comments:

Post a Comment