The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issues a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Department of Transportation and Public Works with respect to collections, payrolls and professional and consulting services contracts. This opinion indicates that the non-compliances are significant but not pervasive.
The audit reveals that 12 employees performed the collection function without the appointment issued by the Secretary of the Treasury. This situation leaves the DTOP unprotected in the event of any irregular situation arising, since the employees are not covered by the fidelity bond. In addition, the checks took up to 12 days to reach the Official Collector and the accuracy of the payments received for the sale of food in the vending machines of the Driver Service Centers (CESCO) was not verified, as a result of which $2,081 was not received.
The four-finding Report points out that $187,713 was improperly paid to employees due to deficiencies in the processing of change reports and in payroll adjustments. For example, nine change reports of seven employees took more than two years to be approved, or the payroll adjustments of two employees were recorded up to seven years after their approval. These situations are attributed to the fact that the human resources directors did not exercise effective supervision.
Our auditors identified, in a sample of the 67 contracts and 19 amendments for $5.4 million awarded for engineering, legal consulting and works and projects services, that none included a clause requiring the contractor to indicate the hours that remained available. In addition, the examination of 45 invoices for more than half a million dollars revealed that it was not certified that the services had been received and that their payment had not been previously authorized. A similar situation had been commented on in Audit Report DB-09-03 of 2009.
The Report covers the period from July 1, 2013, to February 28, 2017.
See Audit Report DA-18-04
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