NATIONAL PARLIAMENT OF
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE TRANSCRIPT
(Inquiry into the Central Payroll Division, Ministry of Finance and
Treasury)
25 May 2007
(Uncorrected Version – subject to
changes upon revision)
Opening prayers were said by
Honourable Fono, Leader of the Opposition and a member of the Public Accounts
Committee.
Chairman: Thank you Leader,
and before we continue on today’s
hearing I would like to acknowledge and pay tribute to the officer who
was instrumental in producing this special audit report on the subject of
today’s hearing.
You
would all have been well aware of this officer who was our colleague and
friend, the Late Tony Kiva. Tony died
tragically unexpectedly on 22nd April of a severe medical
condition. Tony joined the Auditor
General’s Office in October 2005 and contributed to the work and effectiveness
of both the Audit Office and this Committee of Parliament. Tony made major contributions to reports of
the Committee including report on the 2005 Supplementary Estimates November
2005, Report on the 2006 Estimates November 2005, Report on the 2006
supplementary Estimates October 2006, Report on the 1997 National Accounts on
Solomon Islands Government October 2006, Report on the Ministry of Health and
Medical Services on the National Referral Hospital January 2007 and Report on
the 2007 Estimates January 2007.
All
of us would agree that late Tony Kiva will be remembered for his important work
for the government and for the people of
(Few moments silence in respect of Late Tony Kiva)
Thank you.
And
as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I would like to welcome and
thank the Permanent Secretary and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance
for appearing before the Committee.
The
Public Accounts Committee’s function is to review and examine public
expenditure as part of this important oversight function of Parliament. The Auditor General has tabled eight reports
in relation to expenditure in that particular government department.
Today,
we will be enquiring into this special audit report into the Treasury Division,
Central Payroll and the forty-eight (48) recommendations contained in the
report. As I have said, this report is
to examine public expenditure. We are
not going to point fingers. This is just
to guide and direct the effectiveness of the Ministry in the best interest of
the people of
Permanent Secretary: Thank
you Chairman and the Committee. We also
share the same tribute to late Tony that he has done a great job for this
country.
May
I introduce to the Committee my team who have been instrumental and a hard
working team for quite some time in the Ministry of Finance and Treasury. To my left
is Denty Tuke. He is the Assistant
Accountant General – Payroll, Revenue and Imprest. He looks after payroll, revenue and imprest. Next to him is Mr Lyle Patovaki. He is the Chief Payroll Officer. Jenny Koe is the Accountant Payroll specializing
for Established and Police. Those are
two big payrolls. Then next to her is Jerold.
He is the Accountant Payroll looking after Teachers. Teachers, is another big one, and with all
other education authorities in teachers, the complication in dealing with
teachers is big. But Jerold is a young,
energetic officer who joined us a few years ago so we are training him for
future leader of the payroll section.
And Jack is looking after Non Established Payroll and Pension. Again that is another group and also workers
compensation and all these things also come under Jack. And at the back is Brian who is our RAMSI
Financial Strengthening Programme Adviser who just joined us, I think three
weeks ago to continue on with those jobs that have been left especially on
writing policies and manual. So that is
the group that we have in the Payroll.
There is one who is on leave. She
looks after deduction. Her name is
Pricilla. She looks after deductions for
NPF, SIPEU, all these Unions and salary deductions. She is not with us. But this is the team that deals with more
than 10,000 officers and if we don’t make their pay then that is a big
problem. These officers have been
working so hard both for the eight hours or they work extra hours just so that we
make the payroll run at the due date time.
So that is more of a introduction from my team.
Let
us go straight to the Special Audit Report especially on the Central
Payroll. I would say that this is a very
good programme of processes that we are now embarking
on or this government is working on to enable both the officers and the
ministries and the public to be aware of what is there on the processes, the
regulations and the work that is involved.
We really welcomed the audit report and we really do appreciate the
recommendations that are being found there, and I am sure this is a stepping
stone for good governance process within government. As I have said the Payroll Section is one of
the most demanding sections in Ministry of Finance. In fact there are people waiting there for
their cheques now.
So will go through this and after this will go down and meet them
again. Also what I would like to point
out here is that to become a payroll officer you have to be the most patient
person in the system in order to meet people.
When you are talking about pay you are talking about the livelihood of
an employee, and dealing with human is different from dealing with money.
Anyway
the report has been done and we have taken some actions and I think it has been
tabled already in your file the responses the Ministry has outlined with an
action plan on how the Ministry or the Central Payroll will deal with those
recommendations and how we will take it forward from there. I will also say thanks to the advisers who
have been with us last year, Darrel Martini and Diana who have been working
with us to come up with this. As I have
said a lot of our staff have been very much active on customer service that
trying to go back and do things take a lot of time and this is a very laborious
job. And just to give you an example; to
get one cheque raised might take four hours, just one
cheque, and you are talking about 8,000 people and if
one query comes in that takes a lot of time to do that. But those are the kinds of laborious jobs we
took. The earliest is four hours. It can go for one day, two days or even a
week or more than that. But at the end
of the day the customers or employees do get their cheques.
Also
I would like to say here that a lot of the things that are noted from the
recommendations are not really in our control so that is why I’m glad to see my
colleague from Public Service who is here who can also share on how those
things can be addressed that affect the Public Service Department and also
other individual ministries. But what I
would like to point out here is that we are so happy that we will go through
the action plan that has already been tabled in front of you and will take it
further from there. We have a first
action plan which is attached to the response that we have given to the audit
office and since then we have dealt with a lot of these recommendations one way
or the other in our normal work programme and that is
the way it should be. As we improve on those
recommendations those become part of the system or the culture of improving
working practice in the Ministry.
I
would also like to say that as we started that off, it might be slow but it put
a foundation of the good working practice in the Ministry. I won’t go in detail on the work plan but I
will wait for your questions and will go through together. Apart from that we have also made another,
and I would like to table this other action plan that we have done which we are
working on to try and address this audit report. Just recently as you know when the tsunami
came we sort of diverted from where we are going from the previous action plan
and this action plan so we are a bit slow on going forward. And also the adviser who has been helping us
has left but now we got another new adviser with us to take us further
especially on the policy and the writing of manuals, especially the writer for
all these recommendations.
So
I would say that we are so happy and I have got a good team here who has been
working their time. Sometimes they slept
at
Chairman: Thank you PS and
officials. Before we continue with our deliberation may I give the PS for
Public Service for his submission. He has something to say for the sake of the
Committee so will allow him to speak.
PS/Public Service: Chairman, members of the committee, colleagues
and … thank you for being part of this …….. and I
would like to say yes, thank you for this report. It does indicate that there are some areas
that we need to pull our socks to make sure what our purposes are in the Public
Service. And that is to deliver
effective and efficient Public Service to our people. In that case I would like to say thank you
for this report.
Yes,
the report made mention on some of the areas that Public Service has a role to
play and I would like to say that with this programme
that we are putting in place, I think some of those areas need to be taken care
of. There are more to be done and there
are programmes for instance, I think our opportunity would be with the Public
Service Improvement Programme that is now being attended in
Chairman: Thank you PS and
officials. On behalf of the Committee I
wish to thank you for formulating a comprehensive action plan that we will
deliberate today, so thank you so much.
I
will now without wasting any more time I would like us to go through each
page. Will start from page one on
recommendations 1, 2, 3 and 4, any comments?
PS/Finance: Do you want us
to respond on that?
Hon Fono: Chairman, maybe
you should update us on the process and the position we are at now on those
recommendations.
PS/Finance: Recommendation
1 Policies and Procedures. Up to now the former adviser has started
working on it already. He left and it is
still there but now we have an adviser who is with us now and we will take that
further and hopefully by the end of this year will have the policies done.
On
recommendation 2 it is an ongoing work that has been done. What I am saying here is the system has been
put in place that makes all the salaries, cheques, and
all these, and I can say that they are very strict on that. That is ongoing and it goes to all the
salaries.
Hon Fono: Chairman, on that
recommendation some of the experiences line ministries would find is the actual
appointment by the Public Service Commission.
Can the PS/Public Service respond to what are some of the reasons why it
takes so long for letters to be processed?
Because sometimes we have to be considerate in here when the officer has
been asked to do a job and sometimes he has been on the job for a number of
weeks and in humanly speaking he is going to suffer if there is no pay. It is the letter from the Public Service that
is delayed. That is why sometimes line
ministries have to pressurize you to raise casual payments because of human
considerations. So the delay from the
Public Services needs to be improved and the process in Public Service so that
payments are made for their appointment letters to go through you then you
process their pays. Is the Public
Service trying to improve that system?
PS/Public Service: Chairman,
we are as part of our improvement programme, we are
trying to improve on these systems on where are the hold ups and all those
sorts of things. But before I think I
need to explain as to where are the authorities of
appointment into the Public Service?
There are several of them. Chairman. One is under the Solomon Islands
Constitution, His Excellency the Governor General under Section 1164 has the
authority to select without consulting Public Service where officers you would
like to have within the Public Service.
Another one is the Public Service Act.
This is the normal recruitment process that all public service officers
come under. The other one is the
Parliamentary Entitlement Regulations where the Leader of the Opposition and
the Prime Minister selects without coming to the Public Service Commission
their staff can use that one. The other
one is the political appointees in the Prime Minister’s Office. The other one is the Commissioner of Police in
the Police Act, the other one is the Comptroller of Prisons under the Prison
Act. The other one is the employment
contract signed by the government and some of the people they would like to
have within the government system. The
final one is the Memorandum of Understanding by departments and donors. So these are several of the areas where
people are appointed into the Public Service and somehow were included in the
payroll.
Okay,
why have they not been processed is a statement by the Leader of the Opposition. Some of these under the Public Service Commission
Regulations you will have to have a police clearance and a medical report. Most of these appointments do not have those
requirements met and so there were delays by the Public Service Commission. They cannot appoint people without satisfying
those requirements. That is you got to be a healthy person to work in the
Public Service otherwise Public Service Commission may appoint somebody who is
sick and work one or two weeks and they die and then the government pays the cost
of the coffin of the dead person. The other one is that you got to have a clear
record otherwise we will be …. people of criminal
nature within the Public Service which is now the intention of having a Public
Service. So those are some of the
problems that is why there were delays in making their
payments in process. Some appointments
do not meet those requirements yet were in the payroll. I do not know how that
system works as far as Public Service is concern. Appointments have to be made by Public
Service Commission before
names are being sent to the payroll and then salary is paid. I do not think I have answered your question
or not but I think those are the authorities of appointments and those are the
problems that we encounter in terms of delays in the appointments. Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you
PS. The idea of formulating compliance
to check list could be one of the important activities to remedy the
problem. In terms of transparency and
accountability could the Committee have a copy of the check list?
PS/Finance: Yes, check list
can be made available after the meeting to the secretary.
Chairman: And in terms of
formulating these procedure manuals depend a scoping document. How far is the scoping document?
PS/Finance: We just have the
adviser with us to continue on with what we have started off. It is just a frame of all these so you need a
good person to sit down and write it. The cash officers are more of frontline so we
have Brian with us now. As I have said
we are working towards having that this year because that will help a lot for
both Finance and all other Ministries.
Just to make mention that the trend that Ministry of Finance is going
now is with all the advisers coming in they will write down or put in paper all
the procedures, regulations or manuals that can be used for future reference to
what we are doing. So that is what we
are working on. And as we go along with
those recommendations we will touch on some other things that we are working
on.
Hon Fono: That is a very
good point otherwise when the adviser leaves we are back to square one because
there are no manuals that local counterparts can go on after. So that is a very good point that needs to be
done not only Finance but every other Ministry that has RAMSI advisers attached
to them. I hope other Ministries or
Permanent Secretaries are doing the same thing because that has been all along our
problem. When we have advisers work is
very good and when they leave we are back to square one so we are not
addressing the problem so that is the way forward in terms of what the PS is
talking about. We should have these
manuals prepared by their advisers and have counterparts identified to do
training. So those are good points
Chairman.
Chairman: We shall move on
to page 2 recommendations 5 and 6.
PS/Finance: Recommendations
5 and 6 Treasury to take steps to ensure … exist. Again if you come to Treasury you will see
our building has just been demolished.
We have physical problem on records but despite that the current year
records we are putting them where we can work on those things. Ministries must make their personal files up
to date and what not so that all the information of those personal files are done in the Ministries.
Treasury used to have personal files and will work on that much, much
later as we have more office space. So
that is how we do that. But again as I
have said there are possible things that we can do is to electronically file
those correspondence and when you search for it, it is easy for you to search
but those are ways down the track.
Recommendation
6 - ……..importing new employees.
Treasury agrees that the recommendations ………………. They are doing that now and you can by
addressing that with the manual that we are working on that should form part of
recommendation 6. That is how we will
implement that.
Recommendation 7. We
are working on that now. The list can
finally be processed now. We had some
problem with the I.T. previously especially on listing. Now we can provide proof listing to be
checked with what is in the Ministry and what is on the payroll. On 7(b) we will be working on that to verify
the amount. I do not think we really
looked into the detail but we will work on that.
Recommendation 8. There
is an adviser who is now looking at the I.T. making recommendations on the
Tele-pay, SMI and all these. I do not
want to raise the alarm at this time but that system is old now. If we do not replace it quickly and have no
plan for it we will be coming back to manual sometimes. But Ministry of Finance is already proactive
on this. We have a report there that we
are working on the replacement of the financial accounting system. We put a
short term recommendation on medium and long term. To replace the Tele-pay will take you five
years, so we take note of that and work is underway on that. The physical risk is the tsunami because
Ministry of Finance is near the sea so that is another physical risk that we
have to look at. What I’m saying is we
are now looking at the fallback situation if the payroll system drops and what
we will do. That is the fallback. The other one was the requisition of getting
the current system to a system that will work to get us going and the long term, the five year one is to replace the current system on
Tele-pay.
Hon Fono: So have you
identified the alternative system?
PS/Finance: Yes, we are
working on that. We are meeting on
Thursday next week to see those recommendations. The fallback when everything goes to worse is
manual system. That is the
fallback. That is where we do not want
to go. As I said I do not want to raise
an alarm. I am just pointing that out
that we are working to make payroll keep working even whatever happens so that
is in place. As I have said, these
officers have been working and they have the experience of working right
through the night to make that payroll happen.
So that is recommendation eight.
Recommendation 9.
Treasury …… We looked to our
Public Service, again on the review of the Tele-pay or the payroll system. We will work together with the Public Service
to get HR right and accounts together so that we do not replicate and we
do not do two systems but we work together so that is why I said it is a five
year programme, and the programmes are coming to make
that happen. That should address
recommendation 9.
Chairman: When you referred
to recommendation 9 to PSD. Have these message
been translated to PSD?
PS/Finance: Chairman, we are
working on it and as my colleague is saying, next week
or so there is a Public Service Improvement Programme and the Selection Panel
is moving towards that. These are not
simple programmes. We take note of this
and we are working on that.
Recommendation 10. Yes, that is going on. The checks are done much, much better than
previously and again it is a good reporting system or it is good that both
Ministries and the Ministry of Finance work together to check those check and
balance within the system.
On
Recommendation 11 ………asking for signatories.
Less than half responded. That is
a message to the Ministries. However,
this is considered low risk because of payroll officers have close working
relationships with Chief Administrative Officers and know their appropriate
signatures. But yes, we do try to make
that happen.
Recommendation
12 – Payroll officers currently check all data included and enter the data in
the system and the Chief Accountant will request that as the relevant section
on the authority form. I would also like
to say here that the current payroll system we have to go extra mile to really
get what. The reports are coming out but
not in the form that you can really understand so we really need to change the
system. Well we addressing all these but
it takes more than your time to get those information
but despite that I think the officers have been very well in making that
happen. If you go in you will see how it
actually works. It is an art.
Again
I have mentioned Tele–pay already. Recommendation 13 ……agree with the recommendation and again
it is addressed in Recommendation 10 and 12.
Recommendation 14. As
you have said when we are very strict on
those changes there are some officers who are affected by this and they got
very mad with our officers in Treasury but I would like to point out here again
that if the documents are not properly done we do not process them. The source comes from the Ministries and they
need to do it right because when they don’t do it right and we run the payroll
then Friday is the worst day for us because those that are not in the payroll
yesterday will be in the office now for casual payment. So again it relies with the Ministry to do
those documentations right, and I’m glad that PAC is saying “do it right”, so
all other Ministries should be doing it right.
Recommendation 15.
This is something that we need to really work on, the newly appointed
SIG Establishment on the link between the establishment and their appointments
on the payroll. We will work on that with Public Service. I would say from the experience that I had
with the Public Service it has improved so we are working on that to make those
things happen.
Chairman: PS, recommendation
14(a) has no responsible office. Who is
responsible to carry out recommendation 14(a) and (b)?
PS/Finance: We now have
officers in place in the payroll system.
We do not have a fully staffed payroll section but we now have those
officers in place. In fact this team can
now go forward. In the past payments and
payrolls were sort of one …………but now I can tell the Committee that this has
been addressed.
Recommendation 16. I
think that is now solved, the proof listing.
We finally can do that now so that is now addressed. Again the ultimate is to get new payroll
system going.
Recommendation 17.
Again that will be affected into the procedure manual and we are still
working on that.
Recommendation 18.
………….. They have been working on
that. NBSI is on electronic now, ANZ is not yet, so only NBSI is working on
electronic. We are working on that.
Hon Fono: By electronic you
mean payments are raised through the bank not manually
PS/Finance: Yes, not
manually and that is only for NBSI.
Again we will review the risk that involved that but that will work when
Ministries do report back on things.
Payroll only enters what is given.
Who the people are we might not know them but the Ministries know who
work for them and who do not work for them and what their account numbers
are. We will try our best endeavour to make sure that those numbers are right on our
record. I am not sure whether we have
any problem so far on electronic.
Denty Tuke: Yes, we encountered problem two years
ago. There was a problem sending
electronic transfer to NBSI and ended up with one person receiving two salaries,
so again it is I.T. stuff there. So it
means we have to recover from them but not all.
PS/Finance: So that is two
years ago, now I am sure we are looking and making things right for them.
Chairman: We are using this
electronic system will the bank charge the government for using that system?
PS/Finance: If they charge
it is very minimal. They prefer
electronic is easier, faster, efficient and accurate. Manually even if I am processing on Wednesday
Chairman: In
PS/Finance: The electronic system is only a trail in the system that
is why we can …………
Fono: (speeches not recorded)
PS/ Finance: As I have said
also that those who under contract as the document comes in you enter them and
you enter the termination day. Those are
some of the things we are looking into now.
So yes, we are trying to work on that.
Chairman: So while waiting
for the system to be in place what at the mechanisms at this transitional
period for the Ministry to really work along with the Public Service Division
so that those who are terminated cease their payments. What are the mechanisms?
PS/Finance: It really
depends on Ministries. So at the moment
we are giving them the proof listing and in that proof listing they go through
because they would know who are terminated and who are not terminated. So that is the current system now. They will have to check what is on the
payroll and who is not. So the
communication between Public Service, Ministries and Finance is paramount to
get this working.
Hon Koli: Chairman, just to
be in line with teachers in terms of payment.
I have known that some of the teachers do not even go to teach the kids
in their primary schools or whatever but then they are still paid. This is a concern to school committees and to
parents because they are still paid. I
know some of the teachers. I am talking
about payment in line with teachers because some parents are concerned about
this because they are paid for nothing.
There are two to three teachers still in town and I know some of
them. They are being paid but the kids
are there.
PS/Finance: That is in
recommendation 22 Chairman. Some of the
things identified here is that in the Teaching Service there are several
educational authorities who are the employers, and because they are the
employers the trail or the documents from the authorities to the Ministry then
to the Teaching Service. I’m not sure
about this year but five years ago I would it takes one year or two years
before you can even know or realize the movements, some are even two years so
then the question of ‘ghost workers’ comes in but they are teaching somewhere. So you have several teaching services if I
may say whereby in the authorities you have another process then you come to
the Ministry they do the process then it goes to the Teaching Service. That is the delay. Finally when it goes to Finance to act on
that it is already a year old so that needs a lot of improvement and we should
be working on that.
PS/Public Service: I think
to confirm what my colleague said. I
think this act needs to be changed if we are to affect it. Let not the authorities recruit and terminate
those teachers, I think it should be done by Teaching Service directly and then
will sort out the problem otherwise that problem will remain there. So I think it will need a regulatory
amendment on that act and the act needs to be changed.
Chairman: Members and
officials, I think one of the problems why teachers are always absent from
duties is because of the banking system and the geographical location of our
islands geographically located apart and they have to leave their schools in
order to come to the bank as required by the bank. So maybe if there is a system put in place
organized by your division and the Ministry of Education there should be some
mechanisms where teachers can access the bank without coming to
PS/Finance: The government
has just announced the rural financing award to ANZ Bank. Hopefully that will address rural banking
system in the rural areas. That is the
physical getting money. But coming back
to the non communicational or paper that needs to be the other point that
Education or Public Service might think of because the government is
centralizing all the education which in the past they are run by the
churches. So rather than having the
money in the payroll system it is much efficient to have a grant to the
churches then that reduces the payroll in the Central Government so that
churches can look after their teachers and maybe provide a better, efficient
education. At the moment teachers are
saying they belong to the government and the missions are saying “you are for
me.” Anyway, I am here for Finance not
for politics.
Hon Fono: I think the
suggestion made by PS/Public Service is worth considering so that Education
brings that amendment to Parliament so that Parliament looks at those
amendments.
PS/Finance: So that should
cover recommendations 22 and 23.
Recommendation 24 again goes back to the payroll system. Recommendation 25 – Confidential information
relating to employees pays should be secured.
Consideration should be given to recommencing the use of personal files
and the appointment of a Registry Clerk to maintain them.
Recommendation
26 – Yes, we have addressed that and worked on it already, and again it should
become part of our governmental procedure system.
Recommendation 27. We
should be doing that and that should become part of our procedure also. These are simple things but by doing it we
will make a good work practice.
Hon Fono: Chairman, just one
general question. It seems that some of
these discrepancies or shortfalls or weaknesses lie in the line Ministries. How often do, whether the Public Service or
Finance hold dialogues or meetings or trainings with the accountants of line
Ministries to identify these weaknesses and suggest measures in which to
improve on that? How often, once in a
year or? Maybe that is why things will
be improving rather than sending circulars and all these call the accountants
and meet. How often do you hold such
consultations or meetings?
Denty Tuke: The Payroll Section, especially the section
that we are working on are trying to organize a
workshop. We are planning to have it
twice a year to call all chief administrative officers or chief accountants in
the Ministries to try to address all these day to day issues that we normally
encounter within the normal running of the payroll system.
Chairman: How many workshops
have you conducted so far?
Denty Tuke: So far since our advisers left, we have just
had our new advisers now in place and at our meeting last week we planned to
run a workshop maybe around June to have the first workshop for all chief
administrative officers and chief accountants.
Hon Fono: What about last
year did you have a workshop?
Denty Tuke: Yes, we did.
PS/Public Service: Chairman,
those are immediate measures that the Ministry has undertaken. As you know Chairman, we have IPAM ………in IPAM
for SIGAS. Like Richard Fallows
recently? He will be the one who will be
conducting courses or trainings for all accountants. So we will be soon advertising positions for
an accountant to coordinate SIGAS trainings for all our accountants.
PS/Finance: Not only that
but they always have daily meetings with the Chief Accountant, Payroll Officer
in the Ministry. Sometimes they just do
not want to work on it.
PS/Finance: Recommendation
28 and 29 - Overtime Allowances. This is
a good question. Somebody will have to
answer us on that. I will leave it there
for time being but it is a good question.
As I have said, which law will prevail?
G.O., Labour laws and all these, so we will
come with the answer later, I cannot give it to you. So that is on overtime. Again as I have said we had a lot of
interpretations and when nothing comes, Finance do
their own.
Recommendation
29 – yes we have a … I think it boils
down to when we are looking for houses for keeping all the documents and the
rain came and spoilt them so we burnt them.
But from now on we will look after those records and we are hoping to
finish 2006 accounts this year or maybe early next year so that the Audit
quickly audits the documents so that they sink quickly.
Chairman: In terms of
General Orders, PS, situations do change and has this General Order being
updated?
PS/Public Service: Yes,
Chairman, the …….Committee has established a Task Force and it comprise of all
the stakeholders, the Unions, all Unions,
Finance and other Departments, so we are surely updating the General
Orders. There is an allocation in the
budget to do that so we are aggressively pursuing that.
Chairman: Why I asked this
question is, so that this General Order is compatible with Labour.
PS/Public Service: That is
right. Those are the ones we are trying
and we are involving the Attorney General’s Chambers and a private lawyer to do
that, yes definitely.
Ps/Finance: The overtime
error identified within payroll system.
This systematic error should be rectified and checked to ensure these
errors. Yes, they are working on
it. After satisfying the records and
what not and if it needs deduction or what not, actions will be taken. This is a hard one but we will certainly go
through it systematically and sensitively but it sends a good signal already
throughout the Public Service. That
should apply to recommendations 30, 31 and 32.
Yes,
we are working on the Payroll Master List.
Again going into the system they have to get it from Telepay
put it into …..and all these other systems just to
make this Master List working. I think
we have the Master List working now. But
what I am saying is I prefer a ‘press of a button’ and I have it to the computer. It is still there. Now you press it, get it, then
you change it, do it and delete all this before you come to the final one. So it takes sometime but yes the Master List
is there. We will work closely with the
Public Service for those to agree.
We have done all
those key fields for recommendation 34.
We have taken that into the process of putting those in place.
Recommendation 35 – National Provident Fund (NPF) Field. Yes, that has already been there. I think the biggest problem for NPF in Recommendation
35 is those new ones, especially teachers.
We do not get their NPF Numbers on their appointments. A lot of them are out in the provinces and
that is why the NPF Numbers are not provided in time and all these and if you
go to NPF the suspense account is increasing now and most of it is from the
government, and most of them are from teachers.
We have five to six thousand teachers that is why we have that but we
have the capability of coming out with that.
We might also go out to Paper and say these are names coming, complete
your NPF Cards and it might go to the general reserve of the NPF.
Recommendation
36 – Termination Dates be entered into the system for all employees that are
terminated. That is what I have said
earlier in Recommendation 19.
Recommendation
37 – Review of ….currently been done by Treasury. We only have one Super User that is the
I.T. So there is only one Super User in
there which means if he did anything we can still …him; either him or her.
Recommendation
38 – Yes, that has been done also.
Recommendation 39 – They reminded me not only for salary but also within
Finance. There is a system that in
Finance that reminds a change of
passwords every month and eventually I do not have enough passwords.
Recommendation
40 – Recommend that a Disaster Recovery Plan be developed. As I have said, the biggest threat is the
tsunami, and again there is a report already on the risk and recommendation for
the recovery. So we will table it on
Thursday next week during the I.T. committee.
Recommendation
41 – Consideration should be given to the replacement of the current payroll
system Telepay.
Yes, we are working on that now on replacement of both Telepay and Maximise which is the
accounts system. I hope AusAid will help us.
Rather than talking about it we will do it.
Recommendation
42 –
Hon Fono: Before you move on
to that in terms of your I.T. personnel, are we having adequate I.T. personnel
to look at the change of the system from Telepay? I mean local not expatriate.
PS/Finance: There are
counterparts in place. The experience in
the past almost fifteen years ago when this was introduced, it was introduced
with no training, boom and left.
Chairman: Do you have a
training programme in place?
Denty Tuke: Two local personnel are currently training in
PS/Finance: This time the
policy of the Ministry of Finance is that you work with us, that is why it will
take five years. It does not come in and
go. We will take into consideration too,
all these that we have gone through and that is why it is good that we have
this audit report that looks after all these, and then that will become
something that the I.T. group will take.
Then the training will go with it and the identification of the people
that work within, there is action plan for each. As my colleague from PS/Public Service said,
that is no longer a short term but a ten year period whereby you have the
project that looks after it up to five years and during that five years you are
actually training and by the end of five years you have a Solomon Islander that
can take it for the next five years. In
the next five years that Solomon Islander will also train a Solomon Islander to
take it further. So that is the position
that the Ministry is taking on all projects and all programmes in the Ministry.
Recommendation
42 – We are still working on that. We
have not had a past good track on Teaching Service yet so we will be working
with Education. But we have worked well
with Public Service so far and we will work more with the Public Service
Division.
Hon Fono: Mr Chairman, on Public Service do you have any system in
place where you identify your employees either through number apart from their
personal files?
PS/Public Service: As you
can see from the civil list there is now a number, a post number allocated to
each employee. We have started that
already and we need to improve as we go along with the system.
Chairman: So that is the
Employee I.D.?
PS/Public Service: That is
right. But again we will be working
closely with Finance so that those two systems work together.
PS/Finance: Recommendation
43 as I have said, we have not really worked with the Public Service but we
will do that now that we have some capacity to go forward.
Chairman: Recommendation 44.
PS/Finance: Recommendation 44 – I think Public Service has just
mentioned that.
Recommendation
45 – As I have said, we have not really worked with the Teaching Service we
will be working on that now, hopefully finish it this year so that next year is
clean taking into consideration what Public Service has said.
Recommendation
46 – Again will be liaising with Public Service on their policy on
increments. At the moment we are just
sort of listening in to whatever comes in.
If there is increment then we do it, it is not automatic.
Hon Fono: It is not you who
determines increment?
PS/Finance: No.
Hon Fono: It is Public
Service?
PS/Finance: Yes.
Hon Fono: In case of
teacher, teachers?
PS/Finance: Yes.
Hon Fono: But I understand
there is a problem of teachers being on acting basis for a number of
years. They are on probation.
PS/Finance: Again that is a
communication problem within the Ministry.
As you will always notice that we process what is given to us on
salary. If you don’t do anything it
continues on so the changes come from the Ministries, and we will work with
Public Service and Teaching Service on the salary authority form to make sure
that all those fields are filled and I have given strong instructions to these
officers that they must make sure that those salary authority forms have all
the information it needs. We need to put
those profiles right.
Recommendation 47 – Yes, we are working with
Education. This is very interesting –
Pay Slips. We will be reminding them
because it is a requirement that all the employees need to know their pay slips
and make sure that they query with the salary officers in their ministries. I would like to emphasize that Ministry of
Finance is not there to answer pay slip query for all Ministries, let them go
to the sources in the Ministries and query them what happened there and find
out. But pay slips are not received on
time too so we will try our best to send them to you. If we can do it electronically we will try
and do that down the trail.
So
Chairman, and Committee that is our response to the
Audit Report and our Action Plan. We
will do our utmost best to improve more this year, and when the Auditor has
time to do it again we welcome them to come and do it for us so that we can
improve more on it. Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you
Permanent Secretary and officials, and before I open to Committee for any
general comments, I would like to thank you for this job well done. As you earlier stated today that Central
Payroll is very important to everybody so therefore we need to keep a
cross-check every activity that is done in the Ministry. Maybe it is better for your Ministry and
officials to provide to this Committee a quarterly update of this work programme to the Committee.
Would you be in a position to do that update?
PS/Finance: Yes.
Chairman: And is this an
update?
PS/Finance: That is an
update but I mean we have covered all those in our presentation.
Chairman: And in relation to
what the Permanent Secretary for Public Service has raised relating to
employing authority, he made reference to the Governor General, making some
………section 44 which the Constitution reads:
“Subject to the provision of this
Constitution and of any law, the Governor General acting on the advice of the
Prime Minister may constitute office of Solomon Islands make appointment to any
such office and terminate in any such appointment as it ever be used to create
and appoint officers in positions.”
PS/Public Service: Recently
it has never been used.