…no audited financial statements submitted; vouchers misplaced
Local Government and Regional Development Minister, Nigel Dharamlall has debunked recent claims by Georgetown Mayor Ubraj Narine that he has been sending letters to the Auditor General requesting audits. On the contrary, so bad are Georgetown’s financial records, that there is very little that can be audited.
According to Dharamlall in a missive, the People’s National Congress (PNC)/A Partnership of National Unity (APNU)-led Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has grossly mismanaged the financial affairs of the city for years and has failed to submit any audited financial statements. Dharamlall challenged Narine to present to the country, audited financial statements of the Council.
“Can the Mayor present to the citizens of Georgetown and the country by extension the Audited Financial Statements of the Council? The answer is a resounding no. Why? There is none. How can City Hall properly account for monies when there is no record of their spending of it? What is there to audit? Yet the Mayor, in his fine fashion, continues to masquerade publicly with spurious claims and calumny,” Dharamlall said.
Referring to PNC/A Partnership of National Unity’s (APNU) tenure as “gross mismanagement and grave misconduct”, Dharamlall noted that they have not only failed to give documented account for their spending of taxpayers’ millions, but they have also failed to set up systems to collect rates and taxes.
“They have failed to implement systems and strategies to ensure that the more than one billion dollars in rates and taxes collected annually are properly documented and accounted for. Vouchers are misplaced, schemes of fraud are unearthed, Auditor General queries are left unanswered all because of unaccountable/misplaced financial records at the hands of the APNU-led Council. The list of financial improprieties is a long one.”
Garbage city
Dharamlall questioned Narine’s accomplishments for the city during his tenure as Mayor. The Minister pointed out that instead of Georgetown being able to reclaim its title as the “Garden City”, it continues to degenerate into a “garbage city”.
“A simple walk through any street of Guyana’s Capital is evidence of the gross mismanagement of the city under the PNC. For many years, the Council has failed in upholding its mandates as enshrined in Chapter 28:01. The result: clogged drains which are only cleared whenever there is a reported blockage, roads which are not maintained, parapets unkept, the municipal markets and buildings slowly crumbling, garbage is evident in every ward of the city,” Dharamlall noted.
“Yet, the Mayor and his cohorts find the time to lease to his fellow party comrades and confederates every known piece of reserve within the city without even getting a valuation done. Some of these prime lands are leased for a little as twenty thousand dollars ($20,000) annually. Just recently the Council was taken to court for leasing a portion of reserve to a company which does not belong to the Council. This company is now claiming damages in excess of thirty million dollars ($30,000,000) from the Council. Does this not constitute mismanagement?” the missive from the Minister on Saturday read.
Unilateral decision
The Minister pointed out a number of instances of alleged mismanagement, including the Mayor’s “unilateral decision to grant permission to friends to restrict access to alleyways and to occupy the Council’s reserve.” He also made reference to what he described as “reckless and deliberate damage” to a Council vehicle by the Mayor, as well as decisions made to grant permission to fellow APNU party members to build stalls on Merriman Mall, even while others continue to toil on the streets.
There have also been instances where City Hall made controversial decisions to pay millions of dollars without proper verification being done to another APNU member who claimed the city owed money to him. Mention was also made of discussions on leasing the Council’s abattoir and the City Constabulary training school to persons affiliated with APNU, as well as a unilateral decision to permit a friend to operate a vulcanising shop next to a place of worship.
Transparency
The PPP throughout its LGE campaign has said that if they win a majority in the Georgetown M&CC, Council meetings will be livestreamed in the interest of transparency. Since then, the Mayor has claimed that efforts to get permission from the Local Government Commission (LGC) in 2020 to livestream Council meetings were rejected. However, Dharamlall pointed out that the LGC back in 2020 was appointed by APNU themselves.
“I shudder to respond to this pathetic excuse except to say that the PPP/C Government only swore in the current Commissioners in April 2021. It was under the APNU/AFC Government that the Local Government Commission was enforced. Therefore, the decision-making power was within the broken cradle of leadership, or for better phrase, ‘lack of leadership’, of the then APNU/AFC Government.”
This move, the Minister said, will ensure “citizens of Georgetown are aware of the level at which the Council functions and how their elected constituency members are making representation for their rights, a move which accentuates accountability. The APNU-led Council rejected this motion because implementing it would expose their unaccountability, incapacities, inabilities, callous, crooked and cunning nature and it would further reveal the perpetuity of all uncanny ulterior motives to the public.”
For consecutive years, Auditor General Deodat Sharma has repeatedly flayed City Hall for not submitting financial statements and documents necessary to fully audit the Council’s books. In fact, City Council did not submit financial statements to the Audit Office for 2006, 2008 to 2011, 2017 and 2020, making it impossible to effectively edit the millions of public funds that has passed through the Council’s hands.
