The Auditor General’s office remains understaffed, with approximately 50 per cent of the staff complement needed.

The statement came from assistant auditor general Gary Peters during a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting on the inquiry into the financial statements of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) for the financial years 2014 to 2018.

Peters was responding to questions from PAC chairman Davendranath Tancoo after saying that inadequate staffing was the reason that the PTSC’s audits were delayed.

Peters said, “The issue of inadequate staffing has been resolved to some extent, some audit seniors joined us recently. However, there are a lot of vacancies at the lower level of staff, that would assist or feed into the work that would assist the audit seniors in completing their work.

"We’re trying to get PTSC up-to-date as soon as we could but, again, it would take some time because we have other audits as well that have deadlines.”

Tancoo said the issue was a grave one as the PAC had a huge list of reports which were not up-to-date. He asked what the extent of understaffing was, and what urgent measures were being taken to make sure the reports were completed quickly and on a timely basis in accordance with the law.

Peters said the question was difficult to answer with certainty.

“In terms of the audit staff, the establishment has 200 audit staff, but we have just under 100 auditors on staff, spread over the public accounts division, the Division II that I am heading right now that does the financial audits of statutory boards and similar bodies, as well as the performance audit division.”

Peters said questions about what was being done to hire more staff would have to be answered by the Auditor General.

The post Auditor General's office understaffed by 50% appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.