COUNCILLOR Carolyn Caesar on Monday told the statutory meeting of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) that she does not agree that $20M should be set aside for the hosting of ‘City Week’.

This amount, she said, is too much and can instead be used for payments to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) which have been outstanding for quite some time.
“We must recognise the day that the City was born. Whatever it is, something has to be done,” responded Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, who referred to the fact that other towns in the country, hosts similar celebrations.

The country’s capital cannot go without doing something, she stressed, but if the amount is too much, then it can be reduced.
Councillor Monica Thomas noted that the $20M figure is only at discussion stage and that ‘City Week’ should be treated as a fund-raising event, as this is one means that the municipality garners revenue.

The mayor agreed that the event also benefits the municipality, and called for the setting up of a committee to further look into the matter.

While struggling to pay workers’ salaries in a timely fashion, the City Council has not managed to honour its obligations to Pay As You Earn (PAYE), the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Guyana Local Government Officers Union (GLGOU), and the NIS.
For a number of months, the municipality has been deducting sums of money from workers on a monthly basis for each entity, but it has not been remitting the monies to the relevant agencies.

Earlier this year, scores of City Hall workers protested on a number of occasions for salaries owed to them, including the non-remittance of the deducted amounts.

Union President Wendy De Cunha, had told the Guyana Chronicle that the non-remittance of the various sums has been going on for some months now, resulting in the workers being unable to receive any benefits and obtain loans from the union. “That is unlawful,” she said.