By Benjamin Flowers
After over a year of public hearings, the Senate Special Select Committee held its last session this week, closing the way it had begun, with a testimony from the Auditor General, Dorothy Bradley, but what happens now?
Bradley told the Reporter she expects that the committee’s recommendations will be inclusive of the findings made in the Special Audit Report of the Immigration and Nationality Department 2011-2013 prepared by her office. She also hopes to see full criminal investigations launched into various issues of wrongdoing cited within the report.
Bradley noted that there are no rules or regulations permitting or prohibiting her office from making any formal report to police, seeking a criminal investigation.
“Personally I believe that the responsibility rests with the relevant department,” Bradley said. “The right process is that after I conduct an audit, I call in that entity and show them the findings so they are aware, then they make a request to the police and request an investigation on the audit findings.”
Various social partner senators also spoke on the closure of the public hearings. Business Senator, Mark Lizaraga, explained that the committee will be taking a “much needed” break before it meets to begin the discussion and preparation of the report. He noted that with over 40 public hearings spanning over a year, there is a considerable amount of information for the senators to go through.
Osmany Salas, NGO Senator, said he feels the hearings were sufficient to indicate what went wrong, where it went wrong and what can be done about it. Salas went on to say that he is awaiting the final report, which he hopes will contain recommendations geared towards fixing the system.
“What we need to assure comes out of this process is that we never go back to those days again where there was direct ministerial interference in processes where there shouldn’t have been,” Salas said.
Union Senator, Elena Smith, shared a similar expectation, hoping that Cabinet would make implementing the recommendations mandatory to ensure that the operations within the department no longer lend itself to people who do not qualify getting nationality certificates and visas. She is also hoping that the final report will result in persons being held accountable for incidents of wrong doing.
“If persons are found to be guilty of wrong doing, then the law will take its course,” Smith said.
Church Senator Ashley Rocke could not be reached for comment. The committee has autonomy with respect to the length of time and the format that the report will be prepared in, but many speculate that the report will not be ready before 2018.
