| And we also asked Usher about the Senate blocking the government's appointment of the Auditor General. He said it was an attempt by the UDP to spite the PUP, but that ended up spiting the auditors instead. Here's how he put it.
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of the Public Service
"I think this was a move spearheaded by the opposition to spite the government but it was a really short sighted move for two reasons. It's better to have an auditor general in place, even an acting auditor general. The process is ongoing in terms of the advertisement for the post, i think 5 individuals had applied for the post, the deadline was last week Thursday and there's a procedure to go through in terms of the interview, etc, so eventually a full time auditor general will be in place but in that interim, that 4 month interim, you want to have an acting auditor general."
"There are certain things that the auditor general has to sign off on and one of them is the allowances for auditors. What I found surprising is that the representative for the unions also did not support this resolution because the unions, especially the PSU, have been advocating that these allowances for these auditors be paid."
"There was an issue with the last auditor general in terms of she didn't agree with all of the allowances but the investigation has been done by public service, by finance and these allowances need to be paid."
"But now, instead of spiting the government, the union representative is spiing his own members because now they can't be paid if you don't have an auditor general to sign off on these particular allowances so really it was short sighted."
"And let me just clear up this point that I think the senator for the UDP tried to make that after the 4 months, Ms Rodriguez does not have a job. Absolutely false, absolutely misinformation. Ms Rodriguez is currently the deputy auditor general, she was appointed, or the resolution was attempted to be passed for her to be acting auditor general, but after 4 months, she still has a job as deputy auditor general. It's not like she will lose a job so that point he was making about oh they would not want to do anything against the government because it's only a four month contract, total misinformation and I'm surprised that he would try to mislead the Belizean people that way."
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