The Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot-Williams received a presentation from the Chairman of the General Audit Chamber R.C. Halman and the Secretary General of the General Audit Chamber J. Dovale-Meit at the chamber offices Tuesday afternoon regarding the baseline measurement of integrity management it will be conducting in the coming months.
The General Audit Chamber will objectively contribute to the ongoing integrity investigation in providing a snapshot on the state of institutional integrity management at the level of institutions. The investigation will use risk analyzes to investigate amongst others confidential issues and corporate governance as well as making an inventory of all legislation related to integrity, examining to which extent the legislation has worked related to ensuring integrity and will examine aspects related to conflicts of interests , confidential oaths, use of public goods and codes of conduct.
The General Audit Chamber checks that government spends public funds and conducts the various policies as intended. The General Audit Chamber is required by law to execute audits, in particular financial audits and performance audits.The General Audit Chamber also can make arrangements regarding collaboration and support with the Courts of Audit of the Netherlands, Curacao and Aruba.
The General Audit Chamber was established by law in order to formally commence operations on October 10, 2010 and consists of a three-person board; specifically a chairman and two members.
The PM recently emphasized that the Government of St. Maarten has integrity programs within the Civil Service and has been working steadily on informing civil servants about their obligations and the pitfalls that they may encounter during their work. We are also focusing on the rules, policy and regulations making them extremely important. Formally it was not that critical as the population was smaller but our community is much more complex right now; diverse persons with their diverse requests making it extremely important to have rules and regulations in place with the necessary checks and balances.