AMBASSADOR Douglas Saunders, permanent secretary for the foreign ministry, told legislators yesterday that the downsizing of Jamaica’s missions abroad has impacted negatively on the administration of the missions and has been costly in some instances.

Saunders argued before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) yesterday that the rationalisation process, particularly the elimination of accounting posts from some missions, had caused significantly problems in the execution of the accounting function at embassies and high commissions.

A case in point is the High Commission in Abuja, Nigeria, which is nine months in arrears in filing monthly financial statements, as reflected in the auditor-general’s report for the period 2000/2001.

“This is one of the missions that was converted to what I refer to as a mini-mission, which in effect means there is no accountant,” Saunders said. “This was done in the context to rationalise and to reduce the cost of the foreign service to the country.”

The report prepared by Adrian Strachan, the auditor-general, showed that several of the country’s missions abroad were in arrears of up to 20 months in filing monthly financial statements to the foreign ministry in Kingston for the period 2000/2001.

In addition to the mission in Nigeria, another in Toronto, Canada was in arrears by 10 months in remitting its monthly financial report, Strachan said. He added that in the case of the mission in Nigeria there were outstanding supporting documents for payments made.

“Unfortunately,” noted Ambassador Saunders, “one of the consequences of that kind of approach (to rationalisation) is that we end up in a situation where we are not in a position to have a qualified accountant in those missions.”

The Patterson Administration, in late 1998, appointed a committee chaired by Douglas Orane, the head of the Grace, Kennedy Group, to recommend ways to reduce waste in the public sector. The measures ranged from cheaper rental of office space for Government departments to new regimes governing the provision of petrol to government vehicles, which Orane suggested, could have saved $1.118 billion in the 1999/2000 fiscal year and $2.386 billion in fiscal 2000/2001. The savings would have moved to over $2.5 billion in 2001/2002.

A report prepared by the Cabinet Office last year disclosed that only $209 million were saved during the previous two years due to the implementation of recommendations by Orane’s committee.

Specifically in the area of foreign affairs, the committee recommended the closure of the missions in:

Moscow, Russia;

Lagos, Nigeria (the mission is now in Abuja)

Bonn, Germany (the mission is now in Berlin);

Caracas, Venezuela;

Mexico City, Mexico; and

Havana, Cuba.

The total cost of operating those missions in 1997/98 was $134.11 million.

Orane recommended that the missions should be non-resident ambassadors operating from the nearest country with a Jamaican mission. At the time, those six missions accounted for approximately 21 per cent of the $637 million it cost to maintain Jamaica’s embassies abroad.

“Permanent missions are exceedingly expensive to operate, compared to alternative methods of representation,” the report noted.

Orane also proposed, where possible, the bunching of Jamaica’s overseas offices, the sharing of missions by Caribbean Community states and the increasing use of e-mail, faxes, telephones for communication and the hiring of host country staff, as opposed to sending people abroad, for non-diplomatic posts.

In the three years since the Orane Report, only the embassy in Russia has been closed, meaning that Jamaica now has 17 full missions.

But Ambassador Saunders, who was previously based in Brussels, Belgium said yesterday that closing a mission carries (with it) significant costs. “Local staff are entitled to quite a significant (settlement on termination of their service),” he noted.

He said that it cost the Jamaican Government $750,000 to terminate a local staff at the mission in Brussels. However, he reported that the rationalisation process was “certainly working” at the high commission in London, where the trade promotional activities have been consolidated.

However, PAC chairman, Audley Shaw was not convinced by Saunders’ arguments. “The small mission in Nigeria (staffed by High Commissioner Carl Marshall and his administrative assistant) does not need a full-time accountant,” Shaw submitted. “We can’t use the excuse of a small staff especially in Nigeria.”