Councilors of the Regional Democratic Council of Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) on Wednesday approved a proposed $3.6B budget for the Region for 2018.
The approval was given during a special meeting of the RDC which occurred despite a rift between the APNU/AFC Councilors and the Regional Chairman Vickchand Ramphal over his perceived disrespect of the Regional Executive Officer (REO) Ovid Morrison.
The APNU/AFC Councilors have been maintaining that they would not sit at statutory meetings chaired by Ramphal until he apologises to Morrison for being disrespectful to that official during a meeting last April. The Special Sitting of the RDC was chaired by Vice Chairman of the Region Rion Peters who under announcements disclosed that Ramphal was on annual leave. “This was a special sitting of the RDC and given the importance of the Budget Councilors on both sides of the table cooperated and worked together to ensure that the proposals submitted addressed as far as possible the needs of the people of Region 5,” Peters said.

Morrison who presented the proposals under the heads of Administration, Agricultural Development, Infrastructure Education and Health said that the overall requests represented a 23% increase over what obtained from Central Government last year. Morrison said that the proposals for the 2018 budget were arrived at after consultations with the councilors and overseers in the ten Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs), with residents during special organised community meetings in several communities, from proposals from councilors of the RDC and other stakeholders within the Region.
Maintenance of existing infrastructures, provision of more all-weather streets in communities as upgrades on earthen dams, provision of more farm to market roads, bridges, upgrading of drainage and irrigation channels and structures and in some cases sea and river defence structures featured prominently in the proposals which were amended and subsequently approved.

Morrison said too that the RDC had addressed the possibilities of obtaining funds which would enable it to give special attention to the infrastructural needs of each of the ten NDCs in the region. The budget anticipates the acquisition of $3.6 B in 2018 as against $3 B provided last year representing an increase of $667 million or 23% over what was obtained from Central Government in 2017, he said. The proposals approved by the Special Sitting of the RDC Wednesday last will be sent to the Ministry of Communities and then subsequently to the Ministry of Finance for inclusion in the 2018 budget.