Officer blames boss for misappropriation

A SENIOR female officer in the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations claims she had confronted secretary George Vaso over the “gross misappropriation and inappropriate” use of a trust fund.
The officer, Dr Rhona Nadile, who was acting executive manager of the employment promotions division that collected work permit fees from the private sector, was later charged by Vaso, the department’s secretary, for “gross insubordination”.
The incident happened last October when Vaso was about to lead two of his staff teams to Fiji to attend two separate conferences and drew down a total of K241,867 from a Work Permit Trust Account for airfares and travel allowances.
In a minute to Vaso, Nadile questioned why the first team was travelling almost a week before the conference on Oct 22, and why the second team was booked to fly out of Fiji three days after the conference ended on Nov 5.
“Unless airline reservations are fully booked out, I see this extended stay in Fiji as a gross mismanagement of WPTA funds,” she told Vaso.
She gave details of how much each staff was paid in travel, clothing and incidental allowances.
 “This represents a total of K161,598 to cover associated  costs of accommodation, incidentals, and clothing allowance for eight officers for what I understand is a total of 18 days of which there are just  eight days of official government business,” she said. 
Airfares alone cost K80,269, all paid from the WPTA.
She questioned why some of the staff that represented the National Apprentice Trade Training Board and the National Training Council could not be paid under their divisions’ recurrent budget.
She said in May/June of last year, K500,000 of the fund was also used to pay for the government delegation to the ILO Geneva conference.
“Enough is enough. I have witnessed numerous occasions of what I believe is gross misappropriation and inappropriate use of WPTA funds,” she said.