Children’s Authority board rejects financial mismanagement claims

JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

The Board of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has re­ject­ed claims of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment made by Min­is­ter of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit, in­sist­ing it had al­ready tak­en cor­rec­tive ac­tion and that sev­er­al is­sues raised pub­licly could have been re­solved through di­rect di­a­logue.

In a state­ment re­spond­ing to the min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tions on Tues­day, the board said it act­ed in re­la­tion to the Au­thor­i­ty’s Di­rec­tor/Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, who al­so held the po­si­tion of Head of Op­er­a­tions, and took steps to ad­dress the dual role arrange­ment.

“The Board states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the dis­missal of the Di­rec­tor/Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, who al­so served as Head of Op­er­a­tions, was nei­ther a knee-jerk re­ac­tion nor ar­bi­trary. It was a de­ci­sive and care­ful­ly con­sid­ered de­ci­sion tak­en by the Board, in ac­cor­dance with the Au­thor­i­ty’s Dis­ci­pli­nary Pol­i­cy, to dis­miss the said Di­rec­tor/CEO on the grounds of gross mis­con­duct. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Di­rec­tor/CEO was in­volved in a sole­ly op­er­a­tional de­ci­sion to with­hold statu­to­ry pay­ments with­out the knowl­edge of the Board.”

On Mon­day, chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty board Mar­sha Bai­ley said mem­bers would not step down de­spite Mo­hit re­peat­ing her call for their res­ig­na­tion.

The board al­so dis­put­ed a claim re­gard­ing the cost of an ice ma­chine raised by the min­is­ter, say­ing the fig­ure men­tioned pub­licly did not match the doc­u­men­ta­tion in its pos­ses­sion. It said the price ref­er­enced “ap­peared in­flat­ed based on re­ceipts”.

“The Au­thor­i­ty’s records re­veal that the ac­tu­al cost for its com­mer­cial ice mak­er was $79,225.00, less than a quar­ter of the quot­ed sum of $343,068.75, and that same was one of sev­er­al items sourced to re­fur­bish the com­mer­cial kitchen ser­vic­ing the op­er­a­tions of the fa­cil­i­ty at the Na­tion­al Child Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre (NCEC), Pi­paro. Launched on Oc­to­ber 28, 2024, NCEC was es­tab­lished to pro­vide tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion and ther­a­peu­tic and trau­ma in­formed care to abused chil­dren pri­or to rein­te­gra­tion with their fam­i­lies or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.”

While de­fend­ing its man­age­ment of pub­lic funds, the board said over­sight mech­a­nisms were in place and that ac­tion had been tak­en where nec­es­sary to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter al­so ref­er­enced the al­leged mis­use of $77 Mil­lion Dol­lars in the op­er­a­tions of the Au­thor­i­ty. The Au­thor­i­ty is not a prof­it-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tion and is sub­stan­tial­ly re­liant on gov­ern­ment fund­ing. It is note­wor­thy that, in 2023, Cab­i­net ap­proved fund­ing to the Au­thor­i­ty in the sum of $150 Mil­lion Dol­lars. This sum was to be used for fi­nanc­ing the op­er­a­tions of the Au­thor­i­ty, in­clu­sive of fos­ter­ing re­struc­tur­ing ef­forts for trans­form­ing CATT dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2023 to 2025.”

The board al­so sug­gest­ed the dis­pute could have been avoid­ed.

It said: “mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion could have avoid­ed the mis­un­der­stand­ing”, adding that en­gage­ment be­fore pub­lic state­ments could have clar­i­fied the con­cerns.

De­spite the dis­agree­ment, the board said it re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and to ful­fill­ing its man­date to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.

It al­so ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to work with the min­istry to ad­dress any out­stand­ing is­sues and move for­ward in the best in­ter­est of the chil­dren and fam­i­lies it serves.