I was astonished to hear some of the answers to questions that were asked at the recent meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) concerning the abuse by a number of civil servants of the gas card (Gasboy) system.

The former Auditor General (Aud Gen), Dan Duguay, had highlighted that $500,000 could have been fraudulently obtained from the government fuel depot in North Sound since almost a third of the transactions reviewed were suspicious! The major culprits included the National Roads Authority (NRA), the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) and the Public Works Department (PWD).

Mr. Duguay lost his job (his contract wasn’t renewed) because he was actually doing what he was paid to do and this is not always a good policy to adopt if you are working for government.

So, the Cayman Islands have a new Aud Gen, Alastair Swarbrick, and Good Heavens above, he is also doing his job. Worse still, the only person who can fire him is the Governor of the Cayman Islands. Damn. Now the civil service really does have a problem.

Mr. Swarbrick produces his report and finds out the situation had not improved very much.

Deputy Governor Franz Manderson subsequently issued an order to all the civil service Chief Officers (CO) giving them three months to address the issues and gave them new policies on managing fuel use by staff.

The many problems with the present system included staff members having more than one Gasboy card and cards being issued to persons who had left the service. Cards were also being “lent” to persons to fill their cars up with fuel as cards were found to be filling the same vehicle multiple times on the same day!

So where would you dear readers point the finger at? Where do believe the fault lies? The people who administer the system or the actual present system that found out the abuse?

Before you give me your answer to that seemingly easy choice I will tell you what was discovered at the PAC meeting.

The Cayman Islands Department of Vehicle and Equipment Services (DVES) are preparing a request of proposals for a tendering process to replace the current Gasboy system for public sector vehicles!!

Whilst there is probably a better system on the market than the Gasboy one that can give even more information but the real problem lies with the human bodies that use it. The civil servants. If someone leaves government employment shouldn’t the person’s CO actually cancel the card? In any system some human entity has to be involved. We haven’t quite got to the stage of robots that actually think for themselves. And if they could the civil service, it would appear, would be the last place on earth where they would be employed.

Surely the first step, before embarking on MORE expenditure in a new card system, is to put the present system right and it lies in the HUMAN side. Make the CO’s responsible and if they don’t they lose their jobs.

Now that’s simple isn’t it? And if that policy is adopted it won’t have cost government a cent.