– fails to acknowledge presence of Minister Whittaker

APART from the Mayor’s failure to acknowledge the presence of Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Norman Whittaker yesterday, at City Hall’s Statutory Meeting, his continuous engagement in semantics forced the Minister to exit the proceedings.Prior to his appearance yesterday, the Minister had written the Mayor requesting that he be allowed to engage councillors on their issues and concerns. This request was approved by the Mayor who via e-mail responded saying that it is in order.

“What you have here is a demonstration of what City Council spends most of its time doing, about fifty minutes engaging in semantics and nothing productive.”

The commencement of the proceedings saw no acknowledgement of the Minister by Green who then began correcting the minutes with other councillors. Green then continued in his line of declarations, making announcements to the councillors, yet again failing to acknowledge the presence of Whittaker who later assured that he was not bothered.
Interjecting, however, two councillors, Sobers and Devi-Ross denounced the actions of Green, deeming them as disrespectful to the Minster.
The Mayor as such, without hesitation then acknowledged Whittaker’s presence and continued with his announcements. This forced the Minister after a long non-productive wait to take his leave, subsequently justifying his actions.
According to the Minister, his intention was to provide the Mayor and City Councillors an opportunity to discuss the concerns that they have. Such issues included that of the Mayor’s complaint of no fuel being issued to him, councillors and their stipend and most importantly the services they should be providing and are not. He noted too that the Ministry has put aside some resources to help City Hall fix some of their trucks and excavators.
Whittaker continued that the issue of councillors and their stipend is one of major concern which he was prepared to address at yesterday’s meeting. He stressed that councillors cannot be given stipends for “sitting at home.” Therefore, they need to attend the statutory meetings.
The issue with the Mayor not being issued fuel was also one which was to be addressed, Whittaker said. “The Town Clerk is accusing the Mayor of abuse of fuel that is allocated to him. My intention was to say to council, let this be a matter that is discussed at the level of the Works Committee. Works Committee makes its recommendation to the statutory meeting and we go on from there,” he said.
However, contrary to his plans to assist City Hall in their developmental strategies, Whittaker realised that the meeting was not productive in anyway and noted that the fifty minutes spent engaging in semantics and irrelevant criticisms, was a demonstration of what the City Council spends most of its time doing.
“All they talking about is a t that wasn’t dotted in the minutes, a word that has another meaning… they are wasting the taxpayers money,” he lamented.
“He (the Mayor) asked me a question on Saturday, it was irrelevant to what was being discussed at that point in time and so I did not respond. And so he uses this forum, in my presence, to bring it up again. Look, the Deputy Mayor spends about twenty minutes talking about what’s considered to be foolishness,” he said.
According to the Minister, people want to hear what they can do to make a difference. He stressed that while the Ministry is engaged in putting out advertisements in the newspaper and anticipating bids so an assessment could commence with the drainage at the main canals they (Mayor and City Council) are engaged in semantics.
Whittaker related that he was expected to address the meeting at the inception, after the welcome. “The Mayor was aware that I was coming because he and I spoke on Saturday and I reminded him that he had acknowledged and agreed. There was not even an acknowledgement but I was not bothered,” he assured.

(By Ravin Singh)