Police being called in to investigate
FOLLOWING the story on irregularities at the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC)
in yesterday’s issue of the Guyana Chronicle, several officers in the City Treasurer’s Department have been asked to provide written explanations. Town Clerk Yonnette Pluck yesterday made the disclosure at the council’s fortnightly statutory meeting at City Hall, presided over by Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green.
Pluck reported that Mayor Hamilton Green is out of the country “indefinitely”, since he did not inform the council about his trip.
Chase-Green, at yesterday’s meeting, did not seek to discuss any of the points raised in the article, but cautioned that the issues raised therein will not be tolerated at the council.
A source had told this newspaper, recently, that it has been discovered that a cheque payable to someone engaged in business with the municipality, instead of being paid to that person, was rather diverted to the account of a clerk of the Treasury Department, unknowing to the payee, and with a signature affixed that was purportedly forged.
The Deputy Mayor yesterday confirmed that this did happen. The responsible officer is to be sent home and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), or other relevant agency, is to be called in to deal with the issue.

Meanwhile, Chase-Green addressed another issue that was raised, which surrounded the existence of widespread and blatant acts of nepotism and cronyism within the Finance Department of the Council.
According to the source mentioned earlier, it has been discovered that Ms Shaundella George, daughter of City Councillor Gladstone George, was recently employed in the “sensitive” position of cashier within the Property Rates Collection Section of the Treasury Department.
“This is a clear conflict of interest (situation), with the employee’s father being not only a City Councillor, but also a sitting member of the Municipality’s Finance Committee,” the source said.
Chase-Green said the young woman was employed on June 21, 2010, by the personnel officer, after an application was submitted. Councillor George yesterday spoke to this newspaper on the sidelines of the statutory meeting, and sought to clear up aspects of the article that he deemed inaccurate. George said he is not a member of the Finance Committee.
“I’m saying even if I am part of the committee, it would not constitute a conflict of interest, because we do not deal with the staff. We deal with administration and the laws that govern the Finance Committee,” he said.
“ I have no cronies and I never performed a function or operated anywhere with nepotism. My daughter applied for a job at the City Council, and based on her qualifications and the interview, she was employed, along with others who did the interview with her,” George remarked.
At least two officials of the municipality have expressed disgust over the way the municipality is being run. Speaking to the Chronicle on condition of anonymity, they disclosed that allegations have been made that certain officers are ‘running things’ at the council, and are being shielded by the mayor.
In addition to the above mentioned issues, one source said that at least two married couples work within the Property Rates Collection Department, sitting side by side, with similar responsibilities of managing the municipality’s accounting system.
Additionally, it has come to light that, well known to senior officers of the Treasurer’s Department, considerable quantities of Council cheques paid out to employees and persons with whom the municipality does business, rather than being tendered to and encashed at the commercial banks, through which they were issued, have instead been cashed by an employee of the Treasurer’s Department, for months now, for a fee, then passed through the cashier system of the tax section — a grave violation of the municipality’s financial regulations, the official continued.
More transactions are surfacing that were undertaken recently between the municipality and the a phantom company,  AP Global Supplies, purportedly of Grove Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara, involving cellular telephones and other computer accessories; and there are additional products bought from other companies that similarly do not exist, the source said.
The most recent to have been discovered — which emerged even before the mayor’s request for a formal probe into financial irregularities had commenced — involves the purchase of millions of dollars in disinfectant and sanitisation supplies for use by the Council.