Dept of Labour under microscope

SERIOUS allegations of misuse of funds have been levelled against the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations with a senior officer suspended for making public one case.
But secretary George Vaso said the revelations were the work of “opportunists” and “faceless hypocrites” who wanted to discredited him.
It is understood that a report outlining specific cases of abuse of funds, including the Work Permit Trust Account (WPTA) have been prepared by some staff in the department and given to new Minister for Labour and Industrial Relations Martin Aini.
Aini’s aides said a ministerial statement on the allegations would be released tomorrow.
Vaso said Aini was in his Kavieng electorate and would make a statement on his return tomorrow. 
He said the trust account was set up in January 2005 to facilitate capacity building in manpower and logistics under the work permit project which he said had “matured” into what was now called the foreign employment division within the department’s employment promotion programme.
In May this year, there was a total of K18.5 million in the account with the Bank South Pacific.
Businesses which bring in foreign workers pay millions of kina annually in work permit fees into the account of which 50% is remitted to the Finance Department.
Reports sighted by The National suggested that the trust account had been used for purposes outside of the trusts deeds – including overseas travels and other expenses.
Vaso admitted this but said the trust deeds were “well overdue for review” and his department was still waiting for the departments of Finance and Treasury to get back to him on his “numerous letters” requesting review on how the funds could be expended.
In the interim, he said the department sought verbal advice from the Treasury Department to utilise the funds in meeting shortfalls in the department’s recurrent budget on a reimbursement basis.
Vaso refused to release the latest balance of the trust funds in BSP to the media because of finance regulations, but he said it was much healthier now than it was in May.
The former deputy secretary of the department Dr Rhona Nadile was recently charged and suspended for “gross insubordination” when she wrote a complaint letter to Vaso regarding alleged abuse of WPTA funds.
“Nadile saw it fit to circulate allegations of WPTA abuse to a wider spectrum of political/bureaucratic institutions instead of resolving any differences in-house.
“While her case was pending, she reached the compulsory retirement age of 60 and as such the matter was left to rest,” he said.