ALL of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) workers should be paid salaries for last month by today, Public Relations Officer Royston King said in a press statement yesterday. “Although a significant percentage of council’s workers did not receive their wages and salaries for May 2011, they continued to perform their duties. It was a show of very great commitment,” the release said.
However, the council is not happy with the fact that it could not honour its obligation to its employees.
“The worrying and persistent gap between revenue and expenditure is inhibiting the general performance of council and facilitating tension between the ability of council to provide services and the expectations and demands of citizens.”
Understanding the challenge, the release said the council took a deliberate decision not to fill existing vacancies in various sections of the municipality. This, it said, led to a reduction in the number of staff.
“As a result, there are about 802 workers on staff as compared to about 1300 in 1994. Many departments are working below the budgeted strength,” the release added.
Due to the financial constraints plaguing the municipality, payments were made to some of the banking institutions to which workers are affiliated, but no money was released to the major institution, Republic Bank.
At the last fortnightly meeting, held at City Hall on June 13, Meredith said the wages and salaries bill could not be paid in its entirety as the Council only managed to garner 50 percent of its monthly revenue, which represented $40M. “The salaries bill is a challenging one,” he said, adding that council’s liabilities at the end of April amounted to $988M.
Meredith said the situation is not far from that experienced every three months in connection with payments to garbage contractors. The Council often finds itself in a predicament of not being able to pay the contractors in a timely fashion.
At present, the municipality owes some $120M to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the National Insurance Scheme (NIS).
In September last, Meredith reported to the Council that the municipality was almost $100M behind as of August last, with $35M outstanding to ‘Pay As You Earn’ (PAYE) taxes, and $24M to National Insurance. On average, the rate of collection since last July was $115M, while the rate of expenditure has been $128M per month.
“Money is never enough to pay salaries, [garbage] contractors, and to provide machinery. This is the position every month,” he had lamented.