“There were probably excesses!” That was the answer of the minister of finance, Pravind Jugnauth, to MMM’s Rajesh Bhagwan’s parliamentary question about ministers' overseas trips. Such a statement would have been shocking enough if it were made by an opposition member. Now imagine how damming it is when it came out of the mouth of the minister of finance and leader of the ruling coalition's largest party!

In another country, those it was aimed at would have tendered their resignation and apologised to a nation – which has been skimping and saving to make ends meet – for criminally squandering their money. Not here, Sir. The offending ministers are probably already planning their next holiday destination at our expense.

So we learned on Tuesday that 184 'missions' had been undertaken in just a year and a half, by our 24 ministers alone! That means that every three days, at least one of our ministers is hopping on a plane –in first class please, thank you – to go and tell the rest of the world how great we are and also to bring back magic solutions to our most pressing problems. And any reason is good enough. We have heard of ministers going to Italy to personally drop some documents in court! Other ministers, we were told, went to the same country to bring Nandanee Soornack back with them. After they had visited the place and had a good time paid for from our threadbare pockets, they came back empty-handed and no one asked them any questions!

If the minister of finance deigned to concede that there might have been abuse, his attitude toward the taxpayer is perfectly in line with the government’s opacity in relation to matters of concern to the population. To the question of how much of our hard-earned money our ministers have spent, the answer was, “The information is being compiled!” Read: “It is none of your business!” You will recall that the information has been “being compiled and same will be tabled at the earliest” for the last eight months. More precisely, ever since the first question about the amount of money spent by our globe-trotting ministers was first put to parliament by Bhagwan in October 2015!  

If the overall figure spent by our ministers on useless trips has not been disclosed, you can do the math. One single minister cost us Rs10 million in one single year and brought us nothing back other than his wide-brimmed ego. In the meantime, the unemployed are still unemployed and some who had employment are now without, our poor are still utterly poor, our public debt is increasing, the water situation is as dire as ever, there are no infrastructure projects in sight other than the ill-advised and wasteful Heritage City project and the law and order situation is deteriorating! While our ministers are going to town – or more accurately, out of town -- with our money!

Ask any civil servant and they will tell you that they had never seen such a large scale waste of public funds. And they have seen a lot. Be happy, though – will you – that the minister of finance has sent a circular letter to ministers almost asking them not to make their abuse of public funds so obvious. A little slap on the wrist between friends, some will say.

Cynics might say that our globe-trotting ministers have already emptied the coffers and that the intention of having them justify their missions from now on is too little too late! I prefer to say: better late than never.

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