Opposition Senator Ryan Walters on Monday called for an independent audit of the government’s CARIFESTA expenditure amid concerns over revelations last week of a $35.7m spend for the August 2025 arts and culture festival – a nearly 800 per cent overrun of the original budget.
He made the call during the Senate debate on the Appropriation Bill on Monday.
Senator Walters said: “The government or the government officials or a specific ministry is now defending expenditure of $35.7 million for CARIFESTA. And why they have to defend this is because they settle on this on their agenda, and they say to Barbados, or they say to this chamber, or they put in the document that it will cost $4m. If they had said that it would have cost $30m, there would not be this discussion today.”
He appealed for transparency and justification from the government.
“And that is the reason I am talking about trust, accountability, and a functioning audit office, because now, the trust is gone,” Senator Walters declared. “I am sure that the citizens of this country do not want to hear from any government official on the spending of the $35.7m for CARIFESTA. They would like to hear from an independent department, namely the audit office, to go and do a special audit on the spending of CARIFESTA.”
Senator Walters also highlighted the limited resources of the audit office, questioning the lack of clarity on its staffing.
“When you look through the budgets, when you look through the estimates, when you look through the documents, right, the information…speaks broadly on how many persons will be staffed in the department, but doesn’t speak to how many staff does the department actually have.”
He pointed to the high number of vacancies within the office.
“There are 31 vacancies in that department, and the audit office is important to this process because that is the office that comes out and overseas what has been spent and how it has been spent.
“So you’re talking about 43 per cent of the staffing in that department, and it was expressed on numerous occasions that it needs to be addressed, and there were solutions put out there in terms of how we address it. The audit office is really a group of young professionals, auditors who have degrees in auditing, professional qualifications, designations and the private sector is kind of grabbing them up because they are offering more attractive remuneration packages.”
He warned that staffing shortages limit the audit office’s ability to hold ministries accountable.
“It reports to this Parliament, gives us the confidence that the government is doing everything that is being done and is doing it above board. It is following the procedures, it has structure. There’s an approval process, there are tender processes, and that reporting is clear.”
In response, Senator Lisa Cummins, the Leader of Government Business in the Senate, said recruitment challenges are driven by private sector pay.
“We heard jointly about the challenges of recruitment for the audit office….We heard from the previously retired, now retired auditor general… that despite multiple attempts at recruiting persons for the office. During the meetings of the PAC [Public Accounts Committee], he heard exactly from the former auditor general what the difficulties were. It was not a government problem. It was that persons were not applying to the audit office because the remuneration levels in the private sector were different and more favourable, and so the honourable member is misleading the chamber by attempting to make this about the government not staffing the office.”
Senator Walters rebutted, insisting the government must allocate more resources to the audit office.
“The cause of the issue is that the private sector is offering a more attractive remuneration package. So we know what the problem is. So that means that the government should be able to address the problem… and then how do you address the problem by putting more resources at the disposal of the audit office.”