CHAIRMAN of the Finance Committee of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC), Mr. Junior Garrett presented the municipality’s 2014 Budget estimates yesterday. 

The projected expenditure for the year is $2,302,189,532 as against the expected revenue of $2,055,467,116, representing a shortfall of $246,722,416.

The presentation was done at City Hall amidst criticisms by some officers, in the presence of Mayor Hamilton Green, other councillors and members of the public.
One of the critics, Town Clerk, Carol Sooba remarked that it is a “highly deficit budget” that includes all sorts of nonsensical things.
The expected revenue for the Town Clerk’s Department is $14M, as against the projected expenditure of $328,472,230; for the City Constabulary $4M as against $370,899,360; for the Treasury Department $1,643,500,000 as against $120,523,739; for the Public Health Department $58,495,000 as against $219,840,899; for the Solid Waste Management Department $3,225,000 as against $386,926,135; for the City Engineer’s Department $37M as against $656,685,412; and for the Markets Department $295,216,516 as against $218,841,757.
According to Garrett, the target areas for 2014 include solid waste management, drainage, the cemetery, markets and public health.
The main expenditure, apart from core services, is on wages and salaries which take up about 61 percent of total collections.
The monthly bill for Guyana Power & Light (GPL) Inc. is $20,332,000, of which $15M is for street lighting; $3.3M for pumps and $2M for City Hall’s buildings.

Very limited
“The Council is very limited in provision of services,” Garrett acknowledged, while calling on the Government to assist the municipality by increasing its financing through, possibly, giving the Council the ability to reclaim the millions it paid in Value Added Tax (VAT).
He said the Municipality is also hoping that the Government will raise the $20M it gives the council in subvention, along with the services it offers to the city.
Garrett observed that, for the past 16 years, the Government has not increased its rates and taxes.
“The value of the money we have been collecting has significantly been eroded because of the increase in the cost for goods and services. There was no VAT back then and there has been a constant increase in wages and salaries. We can go either to a magistrate’s court or to the high court but both options are frustrating,” he lamented.
Meanwhile, Sooba told the Guyana Chronicle that some of the items represented in the budget are illogical.
“For instance, they have included provisions for pensions and gratuity which they, for many years, wanted while they are not salaried employees. And a lot of what has been placed in the budget cannot really be provided for.
“So, when they caused the budget to be redone to accommodate some of the things they wanted, it became a highly deficit budget.
“We had a budget that was not deficit before. They fully participated but did not approve, because they wanted to make provisions for things that are not supposed to be in it. What they are telling the public don’t really make sense,” Sooba declared.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green told this newspaper, following the presentation, that she believes the council can still work towards the deficit.
“We are hoping that we can actually see work being done this year,” she said.

Most worrying
The most worrying issue in the city, though, is garbage, she admitted.
“We have not been able to address it properly because we don’t have a proper manager in the town in terms of the Chief Executive Officer who has no idea and no vision.
“You see garbage dumped at every single corner in the city and, unless you are not able to sit with the contractors and the workers and tell them exactly what you want, go in the streets and show them how you want it to be done, we are not going to get anywhere.
“We just can’t sit in our offices and do it,” she agreed.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)