The Government should seriously consider establishing a ministry of state boards to oversee their overall functions. Cabinet is finding it very difficult to staff over 130 boards with about 1,000 directors. The task is somewhat insurmountable. If they continue as they are going, by this time next year some boards might not have their full complement of directors.
An entity as a ministry could be charged with the following functions:
1. Appointing board directors after thorough checks of their background and business connections to prevent any form of perceived corruption.
2. Having the power to recommend to Cabinet to remove a director and replace at a moment’s notice for some form of infraction after due process.
3. To continually monitor the boards for accountability and transparency and freeze funds with immediate effect where there are breaches of protocol.
4. Making unannounced visits to board meetings to ensure the correct protocol is being followed.
5. Receiving fortnightly reports of the operations of the boards.
6. Seeking the approval of the ministry of state boards whenever a project costs in the vicinity of scores of millions.
All state boards that were constituted by the PP government and have not yet been replaced must not be given the 2015 to 2016 allocation from the Budget. They must just ensure that they hold on until a new board is appointed.
In the past most boards operated like a law unto themselves. They were like runaway horses. EMBD is a perfect case in point. They spent hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to develop land that could have been developed with a fraction of that cost. I hope by now the Minister of Housing has fired that old EMBD board.
People just have not got it—taxpayers’ money does not fall from trees. The money is earned by the energy, manufacturing sector and taxpayers like you and me. It must not be business as usual with our great grandchildren’s money.
John Jessamy,
Fyzabad