WELL the Genie is out of the bottle with the discovery of four secret bank accounts and it will be very difficult for the City Treasurer, Town Clerk or the Mayor of Georgetown to stuff it back into the bottle.To begin, the law stipulates that the Georgetown municipality should have only one account, and I challenge any municipal official to prove this to be false. So apart from the other four accounts being surreptitious, which is a downright disgrace, it is also completely illegal. The fact that they don’t include them into the financial statements is criminal and needs to be dealt with as such.
The fact that the Town Clerk is preventing a forensic audit from being held clearly indicates that there is much to hide at that institution. Might I say that the discovery of the four secret bank accounts is the mere tip of the iceberg of what has been and continues to be, the propagation of massive corruption and wrongdoing at City Hall. When the cover is finally blown at the Council, it will turn out to be the biggest scandal and venality Guyana has ever seen.
And could you imagine the Town Clerk giving us a lecture on Corruption of Omission and Corruption of Commission? Unbelievable!
Let me give him some examples of Corruption of Omission to which they are engaged, including their failure to remit National Insurance Scheme and Guyana Revenue Authority contributions and deductions that they deduct from their employees for months at a time, or when they collect property rates which are supposed to fix roads, or install street lights or to provide humane and hygienic meat-processing facilities to citizens which they don’t, but instead use these property rates to travel around the world. And I could give tons of other examples.
Regarding examples of Corruption of Commission, one can allude to the awarding of contracts of hundreds of millions of dollars to a special friend known as “Brother” or “ Man” without tender or procurement procedures and , the well-known and shameful parking meter arrangement. I consider the Town Clerk’s lecture and excuse for failing to pay employees on time to be presumptuous, arrogant and disrespectful to all Guyanese.
Best Regards
Deodarie Putulall