Following revelations earlier this week by the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority that the agency is running “thin” on auditors to probe the accounts of the oil companies, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo believes that the government may have to turn to outside help if the situation persists.

During his weekly press conference yesterday, Mr. Jagdeo said while the preference is to have locals trained and work in these crucial departments, the Government has acknowledged that there is labour mobility and people now have choices.

“The thing is we are trying to use as many local people as possible, but if there is an absence of local people and we don’t have the requisite skills, we have no alternative but to turn to the technical skills from abroad, but that’s a crucial area of capacity building in the GRA that we have to work on—that is the GRA. We have a number of young people that are working there and they have been doing a lot of training so it is our preference to have local people, our own people work in these agencies but if you don’t have the skill we would have to go abroad,” Mr. Jagdeo said.

The GRA has also complained about losing many of its staff members to oil companies that are offering much higher salaries and better benefits.

Mr. Jagdeo noted that that situation is not limited to the GRA. He explained that other government agencies are losing staff to the private sector, but at the same time some private sector employees are moving into government positions.

He said while the situation is unfortunate, it is one that also must be celebrated where people feel they have alternatives and is not confined to one job.

“But if the GRA comes to us and say we cannot get x work done because we don’t have this y skill, the  we will deal with it immediately but we don’t want to deal with it on a blanket basis, they have to demonstrate a need and a very specific need,” Mr. Jagdeo said.

The Vice President said the government must be cautious about how it intends to fill those gaps in the GRA, noting that a situation can arise where government brings in people, and those skills are available right here.

He said government will therefore work with the GRA to have the situation corrected.

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