Five years at one go: clearing the PAC backlog without examining the accounts

Nov 15, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

(Kaieteur News) – The Public Accounts Committee, the National Assembly’s financial oversight body, has agreed to examine the Auditor General’s reports for 2020 to 2024 together, “side by side”. That would be welcome news, except that for five years the Committee could hardly find time to meet. I suspect the decision is driven by the Government’s wish for bragging rights: to declare the backlog cleared. A failure of scrutiny will have been converted into a claim of completion.

PAC Chairman Vishnu Panday told the Assembly the Committee met just 26 times in five years, because Government members stayed away. In September he called combining 2020–2024 virtually impossible without sacrificing scrutiny. Yet he accepted it. Under the Government’s own 2022 quorum rule, two members from each side must be present; an Opposition walkout would have stopped the vote.