KINGSTON, Jamaica — The management of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) today responded to an assertion attributed to the company’s former chairman, Reverend Garnett Roper, that outlines from an internal audit were intended to create a smokescreen to mask existing challenges at the bus company.

The outlines from the audit were revealed by Transport and Mining Minister Mike Henry last Saturday.

The JUTC said in a news release Tuesday that the audit, which was ordered by the current JUTC board, revealed procurement breaches, a breakdown in security, massive overtime payments, among other major issues.

Reverend Roper, in a media report, was said to have indicated that the audit was intended to deflect attention from existing problems at the JUTC, including the rolling out of fewer buses, JUTC said.

“….I sympathise with the minister, he has no letter of credit, he has no arrangements to get spare parts, and the buses are stopping ….he has a tough hand to draw…” Reverend Roper was reportedly quoted as saying.

The JUTC’s Managing Director Paul Abrahams has since invited Reverend Roper to “challenge the facts which were presented by Minister Henry,” which Abrahams said were not just reflective of the audit results, “but were informed by the same senior management team that Reverend Roper left in office earlier this year”.

Abrahams, in inviting Reverend Roper to contradict the audit findings and the reports from the management team, reminded him that “the team served then and has largely continued to serve since, rendering it impractical to question the authenticity of the information that was presented”.