MINISTER of Local Government and Regional Development, Mr. Ganga Persaud has said that he is becoming impatient with the slow process of the investigation into the alleged City Hall fraud.

Updating the media yesterday, during the weekly press conference at his Fort Street, Kingston, Georgetown office, he said that, like himself, the municipality operatives have expressed the same view on the matter.
Persaud stated that discourses with the Auditor General’s Office and the Guyana Police Force (GPF) have brought to recognition the complexity of the situation as it relates to the probe.
However, he said: “We want to commend them for the thoroughness of the work that has been done, so far.”
According to him, coming out of dialogue with the Auditor General, his understanding is that they will be in a position to complete a report about the issues that were raised, within nine to ten days.
He said, though, that the GPF will take a longer time to get theirs done since they would need to look at the finding of the Auditor General before taking any further steps.
The Minister added that the six officers who were requested to proceed on vacation to facilitate a proper investigation into the financial irregularities unearthed were given additional leave pending the outcome.
The Ministry, during an inquiry into City Hall operations, had discovered that the Council owes various entities more than $1 billion.

DISCLOSURES
Initially, there were allegations against the Town Clerk and the Treasurer by the Auditor General’s Office but the probe has since widened and among the disclosures are the existence of high overtime claims, major debts, fuel fraud, abuse of resources for personal use and unauthorised loans.
Those discoveries were made by a special team headed by Mr. Keith Burrowes and he described the exposures as “most shocking.”
Since then, the Georgetown Municipality is being run by a new group of officers, following a decision by the Ministry to send the six senior officers – Town Clerk Yonnette Pluck, City Engineer Gregory Erskine, City Treasurer Andrew Meredith, Deputy Town Clerk Sharon Harry-Munroe, Solid Waste Director Hubert Urlin and Personnel Officer Paulette Braithwaite – letters to go off from July 23 last.
The Ministry has handed over all relevant documents to the police to assist in the probe.