Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), which has re­ceived more than $6 bil­lion in pub­lic fund­ing since 2010, is cur­rent­ly fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant scruti­ny due to “alarm­ing rev­e­la­tions” of wide­spread cor­rup­tion and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

A 2013 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port first raised con­cerns, not­ing $266 mil­lion in URP pay­ments lacked prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion or trans­paren­cy. Sub­se­quent in­ter­nal au­dits fur­ther un­cov­ered fic­ti­tious in­voic­es for un­de­liv­ered ma­te­ri­als and job ros­ters list­ing “ghost work­ers.”