Warmington Blasts Decision To Let Petrojam Select Forensic Auditors
A junior minister in the Andrew Holness administration yesterday sided with the parliamentary Opposition, suggesting that the management of the scandal-scarred state-owned oil refinery Petrojam should never have been given the responsibility to craft the terms of reference for the forensic audit into the $5.2 billion oil losses uncovered at the entity.
Everald Warmington, state minister in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), stunned other lawmakers at yesterday’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament meeting when he declared “it was totally illogical to have thought of this in the first place”.
“I’m being honest. We need to have a system that is totally transparent,” Warmington insisted.
His pronouncement came after Sancia Bennett Templer, permanent secretary in the OPM, revealed that an initial draft of the terms of reference was completed by the management of Petrojam and submitted to her office for review.
“Petrojam will proceed to market to procure a consultant to undertake that audit of oil losses as soon as we have completed the procurement process,” Bennett Templer added at the meeting, which was held at Gordon House in downtown Kingston.
The consultant will be selected through the open-tender process, she revealed.
The arrangement triggered outrage among the opposition members on the committee, who questioned why the management of the refinery was being allowed chose its investigator.
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Image: theilr (flickr)