Further review of schemes not "warranted’

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 12

Further review of schemes not "warranted’

PA Wellington The Audit Office does not intend to review the Labour Department’s axed contract work scheme. The Auditor-General, Mr Brian Tyler, said that police and Labour Department reports had dealt with the issues in detail, and a further review by the Audit Officq was unlikely to add to public knowledge of the schemes.

Mr Tyler asked last week to see copies of the police and Labour Department reports into the spending on gangs by Government departments. The scheme was stopped on Monday, when the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, announced there would be no new contracts under the scheme. Existing contracts would

be honoured, provided they were not shown to be “rip-offs,” he said. In his last annual report, Mr Tyler said that in 1984 the Labour Department’s controls were inadequate to ensure that payments were being made only for work on approved programmes, or that the number of employees claimed for were, in fact, engaged on the programmes. He said the Secretary of Labour fully appreciated the weaknesses, which had been the subject of public comment, and that it was these which had led to the scheme’s withdrawal. The Audit Office would work with the Labour Department to help ensure that the remaining schemes administered by the department ran satisfactorily.■