The minister of finance’s stated intention to present a serr sintir budget sounds reasonable and welcome. Ministries have to restrict their demands to essential items. Nothing superfluous. Everyone has been warned.

After all, this is no time for extravagance. All the economic indicators are in the red and the minister can no longer raid the Bank of Mauritius to ‘balance’ his budget as the coffers have already been emptied and our foreign currency situation is getting tough. People in the know and several economists are wondering where the money even for a serr sintir budget is going to come from. Of course, no stated intention of reducing the extravagance of parliamentarians and ministers was made. No policy to reduce the number of overseas trips that make a huge hole in our public purse and bring absolutely nothing in return other than suitcases full of shopping done while they were supposed to be attending conferences. No plans to reduce the number of white elephants this government embarked on when we needed more productive projects that generate revenues and jobs. No streamlining of a bloated public sector, no nothing. 

Still, any attempt to reduce the lifestyle of the government is commendable. Sadly, this statement coincides with the publication of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report which renders this stated intention rather meaningless. 

Every year, the PAC deliberates on the report of the Director of Audit and calls upon Government officials to account for some of the findings identified in that report. The findings of the committee this year show not only the amount of waste of public funds going on even as the minister is calling for parsimony, but the fact that we are not likely to come out of this situation anytime soon.  

The reason is simple: it is now clear that ministries seem to be run like corner shops. “Hundreds of millions of rupees worth of contract had been awarded during the COVID-19 pandemic without any record being kept as to who took the decision to award those contract to suppliers (some of whom were not registered suppliers) and who approved the price to be paid for those products,” the PAC notes. When confronted with the major shortcomings and irregularities in the procurement exercise, “one representative of the Ministry of Health and Wellness simply stated that they were ‘saving lives’ and working under pressure,” the committee states. A sad reminder of the mantra repeated by the importer of Molnupiravir when the fraud he was involved in came to the light.  Can it all be put to the account of the Quarantine Act and , by the way , when are those “urgency “ rules and regulations going to be set aside?

If the saving lives mantra is something everyone hides behind, no one is guilty of anything either. The PAC highlights that “The representative of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Consumer Protection told Your Committee that ‘the instructions I received for the award of the contract for the nasal swabs and for the other two equipments were verbal instructions that I received from my minister’.” So if there are no records of instructions received from the minister because they were all verbal, there is no specific culprit even when there is proof of malfeasance. You pass the buck a few times and the story stops there! 

The long and short of it is that whatever ministries put in their budgets, ministers will turn a blind eye to it and give verbal instructions to favour particular companies for specific reasons and more millions of rupees will go down the drain, with no record, no accountability and no sanctions. Many civil servants – once a respected species – have been reduced to ‘Yes, Minister’ men and women who have lost the long tradition of advising, contradicting and putting their foot down. Today, a verbal instruction to favour a supplier is complied with immediately, the only reason being that “we are saving lives”. Faulty ventilators, overpriced generic drugs, petrol that wrecked hundreds of cars, clauses left off contracts, no due diligence on suppliers…all this results in a criminal waste of public funds. As for saving lives, the committee summarises its answer in one sentence: “by ordering ventilators manufactured by an unknown manufacturer from an unknown supplier without any due diligence, the ministry did not act reasonably and, in fact, recklessly put the lives of Mauritians at risk through lack of ventilators.”

So the minister of finance’s request to ministries to be frugal is not addressed to the officials or their ministers. It is aimed at the working classes who have been tightening their belts so much for the last few years that the buckles have fallen off. It is a harbinger for worse times to come.