MINISTER of Local Government and Regional Development, Ganga Persaud, has expressed his satisfaction with the support given to his ministry by the Auditor General’s department in relation to accountability at the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs). “During the year 2012 we would have had to act on a number of complaints, allegations and accusations with regards to how some of our NDCs and municipalities would have been accounting for taxpayers’ resources…because of that we had invited the Auditor General into a number of NDCs and municipalities,” the Local Government Minister told reporters.
Minister Persaud said his ministry had received from the regional administration of Region One, a document pointing to a number of issues regarding accountability in the Port Kaituma/Arakaka/Matthews Ridge NDC.
“We provided the concerns raised to the assistant overseer so that she can respond to the allegations and comments and, at the same time, we sought to conduct an investigation with regards to the record keeping at that NDC,” Minister Persaud said.
He added that in order to conduct the investigation it was deemed necessary to ask the assistant overseer to proceed on leave and the Ministry responded to the request from the investigator.
“The investigator has completed his investigations – we are waiting on the report and we are also awaiting the written response from the assistant overseer regarding the allegations,” the Local Government Minister said.