Substantial mismanagement and widespread abuse of the system are blamed for an 800 percent overspend on overtime at the Department of Environmental Health in an internal government audit.
Overtime payments, mostly to trash collectors and landfill workers, exceeded the 18-month budget by almost $2 million in 2016/17. The overspending came to light when the department ran out of money to pay staff salaries in late 2017 and had to go to senior ministry officials to ask for more funds.
An investigation by the Internal Audit Service concluded that there had most likely been deliberate abuse of the overtime system. The auditors highlight the potential for a “formal fraud investigation.”
Phase three of the report, completed in September, identified multiple employees with what are described as “implausible” overtime records.
The audit report, released to the Cayman Compass following an open records request, states, “Inadequate management information renders it impossible to quantify, but a significant number of paid overtime hours could have been regular work hours for which no additional expenditure should have been made.”
The Compass was granted access to all three parts of the report but…
