14ymedio, Havana, 19 March 2024 — Last year, Ciego de Ávila had only 99 of the 172 trained government employees needed to conduct financial audits in the province. The reduction in personnel, who are tasked with preventing theft and the diversion of resources at state companies, was the hot topic at the annual meeting to discuss the work of the provincial government’s auditing system according to an article published on Monday in Invasor, the province’s official Communist Party newspaper.
The article cited low graduation rates in mid-level accounting programs, poor working conditions and meager salaries as the causes of a “marked tendency toward depression” among accountants. It made no mention, however, of the unprecedented exodus that has been draining the Island of all types of workers in recent year, nor of the widespread rejection of accounting as an occupation in a country where the diversion of resources is a way of life of many public-sector employees.
The news comes amid a disastrous situation the government is facing in the agriculture, food manufacturing and tourism sectors. “The Gran Caribe hotel group has no database auditors at its five Jardines del Rey resort hotels. Only Emprestur and Palmares have in-house auditors at all,” reports Invasor.
The news comes amid a disastrous situation the government is facing in the agriculture, food manufacturing and tourism sectors
Of the 121 audits Ciego de Avila carried out in 2023, thirty found incidents the article described as “deficient” a