Speaker of Parliament, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has invoked his powers to establish a Parliamentary Subcommittee for the oversight and scrutiny of a report regarding a special investigation into the Housing Authority.
The report is about an investigation into the illegal allocation of lots and abuse of tender processes at the Housing Authority.
Ratu Naiqama says he took notes of the unresolved issues reported and thanked the Chairperson for fully reporting all that he was supposed to, even on missing files and on those who had disappeared for the interview.
He says the Subcommittee will further investigate the unresolved issues and report back to his Office which will determine the membership of the Subcommittee as well as issue a Terms of Reference.
The Speaker says the Subcommittee will report back to his Office as per the deadline that will be issued to them.
However, Opposition MP Alvick Maharaj has questioned how this report ended up in Parliament as another report on the special investigation done by KPMG has not been tabled in Parliament but it also needs to be.
Maharaj says this special investigation was done as per the official request from the Minister to the Board and then a special investigation was carried out.
He says that just because the Office of Auditor General was involved in carrying out the first special special investigation, this particular report ended up in Parliament as per the Audit Act 1965 and had the Minister back then used any other audit agency, like BDO, that report would not have ended up in Parliament.
Ratu Naiqama says he is ruling on this based on the content of the report that was elaborated on by the Chair of the Committee and based upon his report, things should have ended up in Parliament.
He says if Maharaj has the second report then he can bring it to the Subcommittee.
