MR.ABDUL WICKHAM, Chairman of the Parent Teachers Association of President’s College, is refuting claims that he is preventing Education Ministry auditors from accessing the financial records of the PTA. Moreover, he has dismissed allegations that he has been refusing to hand over documents to the school board for the purpose of verification.
Mr. Wickham’s statements came after this newspaper invited him to respond to claims that he was misusing  PTA funds and resources of  President’s College.
He alleges that he has spent thousands of dollars of his own funds to ensure that certain works were carried out at the school. He explained that he took over at the helm of the PTA in 2010, and inherited a body that, for two years, had no financial records. Upon his assumption of duties as PTA head, he realized that the school’s document centre and canteen were struggling to see profits.
Wickham further stated that it is, in fact, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of President’s College, Mr. David De Groot, who has been attempting to dictate the operations of the PTA with a concentrated effort to discredit its chairman.
The Guyana Chronicle had received reports that Mr. Wickham and the former deputy head teacher of  President’s College were handling the affairs of the PTA in a manner that was counterproductive to the welfare of the students, the PTA and the school as a whole. This publication invited Mr. Wickham to clear his name, and also asked him to walk with any documentation he had in his possession that would support his claim that he has been managing the affairs of the PTA in the best interest of President’s College.
A Republic Bank statement; dated letters from the confidential secretary of former President Bharrat Jagdeo, former Education Ministry Permanent Secretary, Chairman and Secretary of the President’s College Board; requests for audits; audit reports; income and expenditure reports; PTA Chairman’s Report, and part of the minutes of a board meeting held on 3rd June 2011 were among the documents that Mr. Wickham presented during the interview.
The bank statement, which represented a period from October to December 2011, revealed that the school’s PTA savings at the bank amounted to more than Gy$563,123 as at December 31, 2011.
The former president’s confidential secretary, in her letter, acknowledged receipt of a letter sent by Mr. Wickham seeking the president’s intervention into the conduct of the board of the school towards the PTA. The letter further outlined that the then president mandated Dr. Roger Luncheon to meet with Mr. Wickham. That meeting never occurred.
The former Education Ministry PS asked Mr. Wickham, in his letter, to submit the PTA financial statements to him for the period 2008 to 2010, and that should have been delivered by the 14th of January 2011. This request was eventually complied with.
Then there were the letters from the chairman and secretary of the college’s board. The secretary’s letter informed the PTA chairman that the PTA needed to cease all operations at the school’s canteen and vacate the said building by December 29th, 2010. The letter cited the failure of the PTA to submit financial statements for the past two years, and pointed out that the request for the PTA to cease operations as the school’s canteen was a corrective measure.
The letter from the chairman of the board, which was dated 30 August 2011, ordered the PTA chairman to immediately cease collecting funds from students for the provision of locker boxes, and that all fees collected should be returned to students. The letter also stated that the collection of fees for the locker was frowned upon and described as iniquitous.
Meanwhile, this publication was also made privy to income and expenditures for the PTA canteen, which showed a profit of Gy$639,276.33 for the period February 26 to July 31, 2011.
The PTA chairman pointed out that he had been asked to provide financial statements of the PTA for a period when he was not part of the PTA. He explained that when he took over at the helm of the PTA, there was no proper handing over system. He lamented that the previous PTA president was allowed to function unsupervised as the PTA head, although he had failed to supply financial statements for a two-year period.
The Guyana Chronicle also saw an audit report conducted by one Ms. Anisah Wickham, which stated that individual’s qualifications as Bsc. Management, ACCA-level 2. That report stated, among other things, that outstanding debts were paid to the tune of Gy$224,802; fixed assets accounted for Gy$2,333,000, while cash in hand totalled Gy$32,460. The audit covered a six-month period, from September 1, 2010 to February 25, 2011.
The Guyana Chronicle was however, not able to see the full report of the minutes of the board meeting of the school, held on 3 June 2011, since only one page was produced that dealt with several issues, including the call to order; agricultural issues; a telephone conversation between the chairman of the school board and the chairman of the PTA, with the latter using several expletives before terminating a call, according to the report.
Wickham is contending that while the PTA has seen its fair share of problems with the board over the years, the real problems started when the school’s PTA secured a grant of close to nine million Guyana dollars from the European Union, which the school board under Mr. De Groot wanted to control. The grant was for the benefit of the school’s information technology lab, Wickham explained.
Meanwhile on the issue of the misusing of the PTA funds, Mr. Wickham said that in order to access the PTA funds at the bank, there needs to be at least two signatures.
Last week, the chairman of the board of President’s College expressed alarm at the way in which the head of the PTA was conducting the business of the body, and at his alleged failure to account for funds being collected and spent by the Parent-Teachers Association of President’s College. However Mr. Wickham is contending that the statements of the board chairman were unfortunate since the books of the PTA are always open for scrutiny.