By Belize Live News Staff: A major change to Government’s SmartStream financial system is drawing sharp criticism from the Public Service Union, which says the new restrictions could make it harder to detect questionable spending across ministries.
The PSU says Finance Officers can no longer view transactions government wide and are now restricted to seeing only the financial activity of the ministry where they are assigned.
The union is calling for the decision to be reversed.
The concern is especially significant because SmartStream became central to a series of major public disclosures earlier this year.
Leaked screenshots from the system reportedly exposed payments linked to the Mira Millions and Kukulkan controversies and revealed thousands of related party supply payments in the Ministry of Defence. Many of those payments were said to be below the $10,000 threshold.
Those disclosures had major political consequences, including the suspension of two ministers and the launch of an emergency audit by the Auditor General’s Office.
The PSU says removing cross ministry access cuts off an important layer of internal visibility.
“Restricting Finance Officers to their own ministry therefore does not simply reduce transparency in the abstract. It removes the very line of sight that exposed the conduct now under investigation,” the union said.
The union added that Finance Officers are accountable to the people of Belize, not to individual ministers, and argued that public money must remain subject to meaningful scrutiny.
The development raises a broader question over whether Government is tightening controls for security and confidentiality or whether it is making future whistleblowing and cross ministry oversight more difficult.
