“Halkitis: FNM playing politics with Road Traffic Dept” – The Nassau Guardian

Except from this article; “Minister of State for Finance, Michael Halkitis said he is not surprised that the Free National Movement (FNM) is avoiding responsibility for the ‘long-standing’ issue of fraud and malfeasance outlined in the auditor general’s report on operations at the department of Road Traffic.

The report found among other things, that a minimum of $10 million at the department had been lost due to a ‘severe lack of order and control around the safe guarding of assets, collection of revenue and reporting of the same.

The general audit covers the period July 1, 2012, to June 30 2015.”

I find it quite interesting that any minister of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) would seek to take any report produced by the Auditor General’s office and prosecute anyone based on same said report when they refused to take action when the Auditor General’s report questioned certain practices within Urban Renewal but now they seek to make claim that others are making matters ‘political’, this is shameful.

Looking beyond the fact of Mr. Halkitis claiming that this matter is being made political by the Free National Movement, he then goes on to clarify his government’s position on the matter, “I don’t expect to them (the FNM) to take responsibility, because this is political season and I can say that over the four years of this administration, we have had precious few constructive intervention from the Free National Movement on any topic,” Halkitis said.

Having said that; we know these things are long-standing – I’m not going into a, it happened under yours or it happened under ours; discussion – it is long standing.”  I recall a ‘when pigs fly’ comment by a PLP minister but also like to point out, Mr. Halkitis, this is what you just did , gotten into what you claimed you would not get into but leaving all of this alone; there is still is the matter of how the auditor general’s report are only relevant when this governments says and it seems to have become pretty relevant in what this minister calls ‘political season’, after he has openly admitted that his administration has had four years to deal with working on correcting the problem; the ‘long-standing’ one that he claims that ‘the previous administration failed to identify’ and only seems to have taken his administration four years to identify, even after claiming “….the prior Christie administration had made efforts to modernize road traffic, but the Ingraham administration didn’t continue the plans.”, I feel Mr. Halkitis is being a tad bit dishonest here but if one were to take him at this word one would question why they spent millions on Junkanoo-Carnival, re-vamped Urban Renewal but allowed the corruption to continue at road traffic for over four years, are they that incompetent and inept at governance?

In no way do I look to excuse the previous administration for not identifying the problem in this department and others but to have ‘work’ begin in them to ‘correct’ these problems one year before a general election just is a bit suspicious to me, especially when the auditor general’s reports are now being used to make this corrections in light of the way in which his report was handled in the Urban Renewal matter, may I remind the Minister of State for Finance that his government went out and commissioned an ‘independent’ report when the auditor general issued one on Urban Renewal, maybe someone at Road Traffic needs to request another audit done, this government has turned the system into a joke.

So, Mr. Halkitis, wishes to end his comments with, “The fact of the matter is that this administration has identified where the weaknesses are, and we’re addressing it, and that is the bottom line” and I continue to winder will this be the same bottom line with urban Renewal?

The Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is within their nature.

END