It’s hard to believe that in 2012 we are still discussing
abuse of fuel usage at the government fuel depot in Grand Cayman.
The good news is that the abuse seems to now be under
control.
It’s taken several auditor general reports and Cayman
Islands Deputy Governor Franz Manderson to bring the abuse under control.
The Caymanian Compass, in a June editorial, lauded Mr.
Manderson’s leadership in this area.
He wrote to the six chief officers of departments or
authorities that were delinquent in implementing audit report recommendations
to curb the abuse, giving them three months to come up with viable solutions.
They did and the abuse of the system has waned.
But it’s abuse that shouldn’t have occurred in the first
place and practices that were first brought to light in 2008 should have been
nipped in the bud immediately.
Instead then-Auditor General Dan Duguay and his office took
a verbal drubbing from the Public Accounts Committee, which, instead of
admitting the problem, cast doubts about the AG’s credibility.
Now Auditor General Alastair Swarbrick also took his share
of tongue lashing over the gas card fiasco.
There are still problems with former government employees
using gasoline cards and abuse of the gas system, but it is coming under
control.
The offenders aren’t just taking money from the government,
they are taking money from us as the fuel our government purchases is bought
with the money we put into government’s coffers when we buy goods and services
in the Cayman Islands.
A new system nixing the cards and employing a fob system
should help cut out any further abuses of the system.
At the end of the day, we would hope that the people
entrusted to using government fuel would be honest and not steal from us or the
government.
There are many other areas of government that should be
examined for unnecessary expenditures.
Getting control over government expenditures would go a long
way to helping government get a handle on our budget woes.
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Regrettably much discussion on this issue will remain lip service until and unless someone is held accountable and I do not see that comming anytime soon. The general belief in the country is that if you do it don’t worry, you will get away with it if you are a voter.