Multi-million contract for meals to asylum seekers illegally renewed, years on end

A number of issues flagged by the Auditor General in a 2016 annual review of government workings, were never addressed at the Detention Services Unit, which is responsible for the detention of irregular migrants.

The 2016 audit had flagged various irregularities on lack of controls, no fixed asset registers, or just copies of room inventory lists that were neither accurate nor complete. The DSU was told to compile detailed records of its inventory and affix an identification code to its fixed assets “without further delay”.

Five years later, in a follow-up audit by the NAO, no inventory database was ever compiled and identification codes were not affixed to fixed assets held by the DSU, which complained of limited resources.

The main shortcoming was the bypassing of procurement regulations by extending contract agreements repeatedly. A catering company was awarded an €11.3 million tender for 24 months to prepare, transport and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to detainees; the original agreement had been extended when the value of the contract was not exhausted due to the decline in the number of immigrants.

However, this continued to be extended even beyond the contract value and seven years later such agreement was still in force. “Although the tender was first published in October 2019, during the final stages of this publication, i.e. June 2021, it was still being evaluated. Management claimed that the contract in force during 2020 was being handled by the Ministry, as it did not only cover detention service, but also open centres, which fell under the remit of the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers,” the NAO said.

Developments were also not implemented on meals ordered in excess of the number of residents: in 2016, the NAO found the number of dinners delivered at the Marsa Open Centre exceeded the number of residents by an average of 11%.

“Details on the number of persons residing at the open centres and the number of meals ordered during a sampled two-month period, namely July and August 2020, were not provided in order to perform a reconciliation exercise for audit purposes,” the NAO said.

An exercise intended to tally the list of DSU employees with the number of personnel on its payroll, showed that although an Armed Forces tradesman had been transferred to the DSU payroll for a 10-month period up to 24 March 2016, he never reported to work at the DSU, but performed maintenance duties at the Home Affairs ministry.

Attendance sheets showed the officer only started recording his presence at the ministry as from 1 September 2015, with correspondence revealing that the ministry was not aware of the exact location where the officer was reporting to work.

Another DSU officer released to perform duties with a voluntary organization from November 2014, was still receiving a shift allowance per pay period besides his basic salary, until at least December 2016. And no agreement between the parties involved was made available to the NAO, which means it could not establish whether the terms and conditions of this relationship were adequately formalised.

The NAO could not determine whether all DSU employees were actually registering their attendance, because 2020 records were not made available for audit purposes.

Key issues on internal controls in the payroll process were also not addressed. “Minimal or no monitoring was in place to ensure effective management of human resources. Furthermore, the person responsible for this area, including the updating of vacation leave, sick leave and Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) records, within the detention service was not familiar with the pertinent regulations.”

Control failures included personal record sheets not being maintained, incomplete and unreliable attendance records, various incorrect castings on the vacation leave card, absences due to sickness not duly recorded and payment of shift allowance to DSU officers who were not entitled to such benefit.

The DSU confirmed reconciliations between attendance sheets and vacation leave records were not carried out. “Management also claimed that, although data is inputted in the payroll program by its Human Resources Office on a daily basis, the payroll system is administered centrally by the respective ministry,” the NAO said.

“According to detention service, the Human Resources Office was ensuring that medical certificates were being submitted for every sick day taken by officers; however, this could not be verified due to lack of timely feedback from the detention service.”