A temporary Auditor General was appointed last Friday while the search continues for an appropriate person to permanently fit the position to lead Belize's "Supreme Audit Institution". However, criticisms have been made that the post is being advertised on a contract basis and that the salary - for an oversight body that should be taking on the government - is about $50,000 a year.

Today the Minister for the Public Service gave a different take on it: he said that this vacancy is no different than any other within the public sector - which includes posts like judges and the ombudsman. He added that the person filling the vacancy won't necessarily receive only $50k.

Here's how he explained it.

Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"If that was the situation then we could not have contracts for judges, we would not have contracts for the contractor general, we would not have contracts for the Ombudsman office so I don't believe that that particular criticism would be one that we should be concerned about, what we should be concerned about is finding the right person for the post. Now let me clarify, it's the office of the prime minister, according to section 109 of the constitution, the office of the prime minister makes the recommendation and the Governor General appoints the auditor general so it's not a regular contractual post in the public service where it goes to the public service commission, it goes to the Governor General on advice of the prime minister after of course consulting with the leader of the opposition. It also has to go to the National Assembly, both houses in the National Assembly for approval. What happened last week Friday was that section 109 subsection 2 says that even if you appoint an acting auditor general, it still has to go to the house so that was taken to the House and Ms Maria Rodriguez was appointed to act in the capacity of auditor general for a period of four months while the vacancy is being filled, while the advertisement is still out. I'd also like to clarify that whenever there is a post in the government service, all of the advertisement looks the same, this isn't anything different, other than the fact that it comes from the office of the prime minister. But where it speaks about compensation, it speaks about the pay scale that that particular post is on and it shows the first point not he pay scale. Now the first point on the pay scale of this particular post, which is pay scale 26 is 50,100 and something. That does not mean that that is the salary that this person would receive. It just that's just the way that these vacancies are advertised."

We note that the constitution says, quote "the Auditor-General shall vacate his office when he attains the age of sixty years or such other age as may be prescribed by the National Assembly" - it does not refer to the end of any contract.

And in that same office, there are three auditors with Master's Degrees, with a cumulative 80 years of experience, that have spent the last two years with nothing to do. They reported that in October 2022, they were informed that the senior management had decided not to assign audit related tasks to them, so they have been coming to work just to sit at their desks. They say they've written to the Public Service Commission asking for intervention, and that the Ministry of Public Service has ignored them.

We asked Minister Usher about this.

Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"It's an issue that we have been trying to resolve at the Ministry of Public Service, looking at the human resource, challenges within the office of the Auditor General. I'm not sure if they didn't have anything at all to do. It's very rare that a public officer has nothing to do at all. But I do believe that there could have been more tasks assigned to these individuals. And that's why I said whoever, assumed the post of auditor general also has to be a good manager, has to be a good human resource manager in terms of being able to task all the different auditors within the office to go and do the different audits. So it is a challenge that we've been working on from the ministry's perspective. But we also have to be careful not to interfere too much in the independence of that office, because remember, that office is an independently established office under the Constitution. So it's not like we can go in and just dictate how their operations are supposed to be done. We can't go in to the Auditor General's office, oh you have to do these audits. They have an audit plan. They carry out that audit plan. And in terms of their operational objectives, that's something that the Auditor General herself or himself would have to do. But in terms of the the issue that you raise just now, it was one that came to our attention and we were trying to intervene."