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66th Year -- No. 3663 Friday, March 26, 2021 www.mauritiustimes.com facebook.com/mauritius.times 18 Pages - ePaper MAURITIUS TIMES l With many people homebound during the pandemic, art can bring about joy and positivity. It can transfer you to a different world. -- Nivedita Gouda Interview : Steven Obeegadoo, Premier ministre adjoint “Le risque de résurgence du virus à Maurice était inévitable…” ‘La fraude et la corruption ne sauraient être tolérées Toute violation de la loi devra être sanctionnée par la Justice’ + Voir Pages 7-8-9 The Scramble for All together, Support for all Covid-19 Vaccines Those who are facing great difficulties deserve the particular attention of their government The priority of priorities of all countries is to vaccinate their Dr R Neerunjun Gopee + See Page 3 population to protect people against the risk of Covid-19 infection and reach the required herd immunity protection L'encanaillement against coronavirus as early as possible By Mrinal Roy * See Page 4 By Nita Chicooree-Mercier + See Page 18 Mauritius Times Friday, March 26, 2021 www.mauritiustimes.com Edit Page facebook.com/mauritius.times 2 The Conversation Audit Report What we learned from tracking every he report of the Director of the National In the case of the public sector, it is the effi- Audit Office (NAO) for the fiscal year ciency of the government’s revenue collection Covid policy in the world T2019-2020 is out. It is of particular signi- and its spending that call the attention of the ficance this year given that it comes to confirm Audit Office. It is for the top civil servants to pick For one year, 600 people tracked 20 types of coronavirus in a large measure the veracity of the various up the points raised by the Director of Audit, restriction in 186 countries – here's what they found out allegations that have been levelled since last analyse the flaws that give rise to shortcomings year in relation to the ‘Emergency Procure- (in the case of revenue collections) and abuses ments’ of drugs and equipment in the wake of (in the case of expenses undertaken or not the first lockdown in March 2020. Much of what undertaken on time or undertaken in such a had been criticised as unlawful and contrary to manner as to result in wasteful duplication of established procedures in the public service by expenses). The initiative for proposing correc- politicians and the media has been validated by tive actions should come from the top civil ser- the NAO on the basis of the information con- vants who should implement them unless not tained in the files consulted and information endorsed explicitly by the Ministers. made available to it. What is however unac- The procedure is more or less the same in ceptable relates to the refusal of the ICAC to the case of parastatal bodies, except that in allow the Audit Director access to the contracts these cases, the corrective action proposed by allocated under the Emergency Procurements the public servants employed by those institu- before the completion of its audit. tions has to be endorsed by the Boards of the Argentina had some of the most stringent measures in the world. Beyond the controversies regarding the parastatal bodies. In such cases, the Minister Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA ‘Emergency Procurements’ and addressed by comes in but not as directly as it is the case in the NAO, the 498-page report has again drawn central government. The boards are of course n March 2020, as Covid-19 swept A year on, what else have we attention to the considerable waste of public accountable to their Ministries but less directly around the globe, my colleagues learned about how governments have funds in diverse ministries, which came to its so than in the case of central government Iand I began debating the bewil- handled the largest health crisis in attention. Accordingly, huge amounts have departments. Thus, the boards of parastatals dering new measures popping up memory? gone waste; systems have been bypassed to are more prone to abusive decisions. around the world with our master’s One surprising observation is that draw unjustified advantages, while loss has So, what does one do? Go on piling up students in a politics of policymaking similarities can actually outweigh dif- been occasioned in other places due to derelic- annual audit reports, even if they drew attention class at the Blavatnik School of ferences. During the first months of tion of duty and absence of adequate follow-up to aggravating cases of abuses? Accept the Government at Oxford University. the pandemic, governments mostly on projects. No doubt more or other such cases reproaches of malpractices to which attention is We had a lot of questions. Why adopted similar policies, in mostly the will be uncovered next year. There will be shock being drawn as if they were matters of routine? were governments doing different same sequence, at mostly the same and consternation at the abuses pointed out. Set up the resulting inaction against the lapses things? Which policies would work? time – the two middle weeks of March They will be picked up again by the Public pointed out as a local trade mark for gover- We didn’t know. And to answer those 2020. Accounts Committee and commented upon nance? questions, we needed comparable adversely and the public will keep treating that This policy convergence contrasts information on these new policies, as a routine occurrence. All this ritual, it seems, Action can only be taken effectively if the with the uneven spread of Covid-19 including school closings, stay at will not stop the wastage of public funds from responsibility for seeing to it that what ought to around the world. In March 2020, home orders, contact tracing and continuing. In the meantime, the public will be done correctly is laid down specifically on though the disease was already more. keep contributing by paying up all sorts of taxes the shoulders of clearly identifiable individuals. prevalent in some parts of Asia, and to fill the coffers of the Treasury in support of It should be made clear right from the beginning A few weeks later, we launched rapidly spreading in parts of Europe this system of perpetuation of wasted expendi- as to who picks up the buck when things go the Oxford Covid-19 Government and North America, it had yet to reach tures. wrong. Second, one cannot get away from pu- Response Tracker to help find these a wide scale of transmission in many nishment for under- or wrongful performance answers. It has now become the parts of the world. The global lock- If this sort of thing had been happening in a on public contracts and expenditures. It is when largest repository of global evidence down rush therefore contrasted with private firm, in the majority of cases, the share- exemplary sanctions are actually made to apply relating to pandemic policies. the varying epidemiological situations holders/directors would be taking the imme- that the tide of abuse will start being stemmed. countries faced. This meant that some diate appropriate redress actions in the light of To date, more than 600 data col- Lawmakers have to explicitly set down sanc- countries locked down too late, and the audit report to stop hurting the firm’s in- lectors from around the world have tions to follow for deliberate slippage in the exe- others arguably too soon. But as the terests. The job of auditors is to point out flaws helped us track 20 different categories cution of public duties. of coronavirus response, including pandemic progressed, countries – in the system and not to implement remedial and, in some parts of the world, states Who can decide to follow this route for stop- lockdown, health, economic, and now action; it is for the management of the con- and regions – began to vary consi- ping the kinds of abuses pointed out in the audit vaccine policies in 186 countries. cerned firm to recommend to the board actions derably. to be taken for expeditious redress against the reports? It is only those who can come up with We then group those policies into damage being done in the light of audit clean hands that can do so. But that seems to a number of indices, including the Some governments were able to remarks. be another tall order… stringency index, which records the contain the first wave and then pre- number and intensity of closure and serve those gains with a mix of tar- containment policies on a scale of geted closure and containment meas- Mauritius Times zero to 100. Fifteen countries reached ures, extensive testing and contact Founder/Editor: Beekrumsing Ramlallah - Aug 1954-Sept 2000 100 on the stringency index, while tracing, and firm international border controls. Editor-in-chief: M. Ramlallah / Senior Editor: Dr RN Gopee seven never surpassed 50. The coun- tries with the highest average strin- This epaper has been produced with the assistance of gency were Honduras, Argentina, Thomas Hale Doojesh Ramlallah, Sultana Kurmally and Kersley Ramsamy Libya, Eritrea and Venezuela. Those Associate Professor in Public Policy, Pearl House 4th Floor Room 406 - Sir Virgil Naz Street, Port Louis with the lowest were Nicaragua, University of Oxford Tel: 5-29 29301 Tel/Fax: 212 1313 Burundi, Belarus, Kiribati and Tanzania. [email protected] www.mauritiustimes.com facebook.com/mauritius.times * Cont. on page 11 Op-Ed Mauritius Times Friday, March 26, 2021 3 All together, Support for all Those who are facing great difficulties deserve the particular attention of their government hen the Covid pan- demic started to Wspread across the world at the beginning of last year and lockdown had to be imposed to nip it in the bud – which didn’t quite happen as Dr R Neerunjun Gopee subsequent events have shown – economic activities ground to a sudden halt.