The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament is today expected to review the auditor general’s report on the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), the parent company for the State oil refinery Petrojam, which has been beset by controversy over the past several months.

The PAC had, in December, initially started reviewing both the auditor general’s report on Petrojam and the PCJ, but those proceedings were abandoned on the grounds that the committee had been improperly convened.

Opposition members of the PAC disputed this claim, insisting that there had been a poll taken among members which swung in favour of having the meeting.

Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis and officials of both the PCJ and Petrojam had been present at that sitting.

PAC member Peter Bunting had argued that the PCJ board had escaped much of the attention focused on the auditor general’s report, which pointed to stark deficiencies in the PCJ’s oversight responsibility.

He said the chairman of the PCJ should be asked to give the committee an account of his stewardship, given that the troubling findings of the auditor general had occurred despite the PCJ’s oversight.

In her presentation to the committee, PCJ’s Group Internal Auditor Ashlyn Malcolm pointed to gaps in the reporting relationship between Petrojam and the PCJ.

Malcolm told the PAC that she had not seen the reports from Petrojam’s internal audits, as they were not submitted to the PCJ.

Monroe Ellis highlighted the issue in her December report, stating: “We noted that Petrojam submitted some reports directly to MSET (Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology). Whereas PCJ is represented on Petrojam’s board, we found no evidence that the representatives provided formal reports to PCJ’s board, as a means of monitoring Petrojam’s performance.”

The auditor general said her team had found “no evidence that PCJ was actively monitoring Petrojam’s operations and providing strategic guidance”.

She also said inadequate oversight and monitoring had led to systemic breakdown in resource management practices at PCJ and Petrojam, resulting in material financial losses.

Furthermore, deficiencies were noted in human resource recruitment and management practices at both entities, including “explicit acts of nepotism”.

According to the report, from a sample of 27 officers at the PCJ, it was found that 11 of the related posts were filled without being advertised, and there was no evidence that the corporation had interviewed or conducted any other assessment for eight of the officers.

Additionally, Monroe Ellis said PCJ management failed to evaluate potential sponsorship awardees, and that this was in breach of its sponsorship policy. She said her team observed that the majority of sponsorships were made to government entities, clubs, and societies, with approvals granted unilaterally and without the required due diligence.

The report noted that as a result of the board-delegated sponsorship function of the chairman and general manager, the chairman had approved $15.2 million worth of scholarship awards between 2015 and 2018, 10 of which (valuing $11.6 million) were not subject to ratification by the board.