Grants worth millions of dollars meant to protect workers in other countries may be being mismanaged, a new Government Accountability Office report shows.
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs last year awarded nearly $70 million in grants to non-governmental organizations and nonprofits working in foreign countries, including Cambodia, Ecuador, Peru and Thailand. In one recently announced program this year, ILAB is offering a competitive $7 million grant to combat child labor and improve working conditions in Honduras.
However, the GAO’s review of 26 grant award files from 2011-13 found 16 of them lacked important documents.
The missing documentation includes key information on the applicants and recipients of grant money.
What’s more is that without proper documentation, grants could have gone to organizations that are “suspended or debarred” from receiving grants from the Labor Department, though it is unclear what exactly an organization would do to be qualified as such.
“Today’s report shows that the lack of internal controls at the Department of Labor means these grants, meant to improve labor standards and to combat child labor, could instead be funding organizations that have actually been banned from partnering with the federal government,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said a press release.
Of 14 competitive grants for which GAO reviewed files, eight files were missing evidence that Labor Department officials had searched through government records of bad-actor NGOs and groups to make sure the grant applicants weren’t on those lists, GAO said. Four files did include evidence that the bad-actor lists were searched, and two files showed signs of a partial search.
“The pattern of negligence revealed by GAO demands immediate action from [Labor] Secretary [Thomas] Perez,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who released the report with Hatch.
The sample of 26 included nearly half of all the grant money given out by the ILAB program over those three years, GAO said.
Though ILAB officials said they have been attempting to better track of the required documents, doing so is hard without Labor Department guidance on what should be retained.
“All documentation and records should be properly managed and maintained,” the GAO report reiterated.
Missing documentation also puts ILAB at risk of not meeting program goals the grants seek to fulfill.
