29 June 2020 saw a new era dawn in Anguilla’s
political history. The Anguilla
Progressive Movement under the leadership of Dr Ellis Lorenzo Webster took the reins
of government. As a result, the Anguilla
Tourist Board is under new management.
It desperately needs it.
The latest published Chief Auditor’s Report on Anguilla Tourist Board (ie, for 2017) is devastating:
It reveals an extreme degree of incompetence
and negligence in failing to follow the requirements of the Tourist Board Act. The new government must never allow this to
be repeated.
The ATB must:
·
Ensure
its estimates of revenue and expenditure are approved by the Minister of
Finance, as well as the House of Assembly, as required by the Act, before a
penny is spent.
·
Put
in place written procurement policies for entering into contractual agreements
and appointing agents to represent the Board, as required by the Act.
·
Ensure
it receives reports on the various overseas marketing representatives’
performance during the year, before renewing their contracts.
·
Make
sure it reviews, as stipulated in the contracts, each marketing representative
on the status of their marketing activities.
·
Ensure
the auditor can corroborate the expenses recorded to the planned initiatives of
each of the representatives.
·
Put
in place written policies on international travel and subsistence so that the
auditor receives approved budgets for each international travel to make sure
expenses incurred were valid and within approved limits.
·
Make
and follow written policies for purchase of supplies, furniture and equipment
used in trade shows and exhibits and account properly for monitoring and future
usage.
·
Put
in place policies for sub-contracted services made by overseas representatives
as required by section 24 of the Act, so that never again can the situation
arise where the Portfolio Management Group in the USA contracted Live
Communication, Cision, and PR Newswire, while the UK representative contracted
White Tiger for its public relations activities, without approved contractual arrangements.
·
Ensure
that never again will a situation arise where the Portfolio Management Group
was appointed to be the Board’s marketing representative for the USA and Canada
without guidelines on how the budget of $1,745,000 would be spent, nor any
review or assessment of the key performance indicators, and without the
stipulated pre-approval by the Board of administrative expenses of US$1,000 or
more.
Never again must the ATB be run as
if it were a private family business.
This is public money and public business. The highest standards of probity and
responsibility are the minimum we expect.
