The Cayman Island government is supposed to produce the audited full accounts for public scrutiny in the December following the end of a financial year. This is a requirement mandated in the Public Management and Finance Law. Appallingly, this has not happened since 2004! The audit office has now confirmed that the accounts for the financial year 2010/11 will not be ready before June!

I understand the government has provided the Office of the Auditor General with its draft EPS (Entire Public Sector) for 2010-11 financial statements for audit. This was a step in the right direction as this was a first since 2004! A deadline for the AG (Auditor General) to issue his report will now have to wait for June. I have to ask the question, “Will he be able to?”

Why am I skeptical? Read this. In his update on the state of public accounts in December, the AG, Alastair Swarbrick, announced, “in the case of at least eight entities the information submitted is not sufficient for the office to begin an audit.” He also stated, “the quality of information submitted by those that had made the deadline was not necessarily of sufficient quality for his office to audit.”

In the AG’s December report Swarbick wrote, “I have concerns about many of the submissions in particular both the premier and the deputy premier’s ministries.”

“It is important that legislators and decision makers have good financial information on which to base their decisions,” Swarbrick said. “The information has to be as reliable and accurate as possible as well as timely.”

The only person who seems pleased with all this is our premier. He thought it was a GREAT accomplishment after government submitted Consolidated Financial Statements to Auditor General by the required deadline of Oct 31^st.

We will now have to wait for May to receive the updated report from the audit office to find out how things are progressing.

We have a right to know how the government we have elected has spent the duty, fees and taxes collected from us. We DEMAND it and we are fed up with having to wait for it.

And mentioning waiting……..

The ESO (Economics and Statistics Office) have announced they cannot release the National Census document to the public until the Hon McKeeva Bush presents it to the LA. This is despite the ESO having completed it in December 2011 when it was handed to the Cabinet!

We cannot learn its secrets until it is presented in the LA. It was scheduled to be presented at the December sitting but our premier did not table it.

The National Census is executed not to sit in someone’s drawer or lie on a shelf to gather dust. It was a very important and costly exercise (over $1.1 million) and every person on our three islands took part in it. The ESO worked very hard to produce it on time. It is executed, as Maria Zingapan the ESO director said, “to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors, making the data relevant to everyday life in the Cayman Islands.”

So here we have a government department actually producing a document on time and we are still waiting to hear its findings because of the people we elected to form this government! It can’t find the time.

“Time like the wind

Goes hurrying by and the hours just fly

Where to begin

There are mountains I’d climb if I had time

“Mm mm mm mm ….

If I only had time, only time

Mm mm mm mm ….”

(attr. Pierre Delanoe [“Je n’aurai pas le temps”] “If I Only Had Time”)