Walwyn makes formal request for Fahie to be probed

A formal request has been made for the auditor general to probe a contract offered to an overseas firm, which was hired to probe the feasibility of establishing a medical school locally while Andrew Fahie was the minister of education.

The current minister, Myron Walwyn, today suggested that Fahie had misled the House of Assembly in relation to the matter, and had gone as far as to trespass on the common sense of people around him.

He confirmed that Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Culture, Dr Marcia Potter, wrote the letter to the auditor general.

That happened days after Walwyn told the House of Assembly that he would have asked the parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to investigate the contract valued at $602,345.88 that was offered to the company called Effect Inc.

When Walwyn made that statement in the House, Fahie denied approving the contract personally, and stated that Walwyn doesn’t have the power to tell the PAC who to investigate.

Today, however, Walwyn made it clear that he does not intend to drop the issue.

He said: “The auditor general was written to by my permanent secretary with regards to the matter surrounding the medical school contract. As I said in the House of Assembly, it is something that is very concerning to me.”

“Even some of the information that was given by the former minister in the House; it’s not entirely correct. But, when you look at the type of work that someone was contracted to do for over $600,000 – work that in my opinion could have been done either in the Ministry of Education with the committee that was formed and the various professionals that we have in health and other areas for free, or could have been done by persons in the territory who have those competencies,” Walwyn continued.

“But to spend 600-and-something-thousand-dollars on a study like this to me is concerning, and it doesn’t accord with common sense. And to make sensible people believe that this was necessary is tantamount to trespassing on their common sense.”