Bickering breaks up Region Five RDC meeting again

COUNCILLORS of the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) continue to refuse to cooperate with Region Five Chairman, Vickchand Ramphal, as they accused him of being bias.

They made this clear at Thursday’s Statutory Meeting of the Council before staging a walk-out at the meeting, which lasted eight minutes.

Regional Executive Officer (REO), Ovid Morrison, has been demanding an investigation into the alleged misuse by People’s Progressive Party (PPP)/ Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) Councilors of National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) excavators assigned to the region.

The REO is also demanding an apology from Ramphal for disrespect but got neither of the two, and decided to walk out.

He was closely followed by his administrative staff.

The relationship between the APNU/AFC councilors and the regional chairman has been very poor. These councillors have said that they will not improve their ways until the chairman changes his leadership style.

Ramphal on his part has accused these councillors of not having the region’s best interest at heart.

At Thursday’s meeting, Ramphal was accused of deliberately boycotting a function held by the Regional Education Department at which he had been invited to speak.

APNU Councillor Dolston Hutson claimed that Ramphal chose to be absent and instructed PPP councillors of the region not to attend.

“Education in Region Five is not about APNU/AFC. This is your region, you are the government here and if you are not supporting them it means that you should not be chairman of this region and until you can prove yourself fit to be chairman, we will not sit on this side of the House and listen you. We will not be governed by you,” Councillor Hutson said.

One PPP/C Councillor jumped to her feet and alleged that no one had invited her to the function.

Ramphal then denied the allegations of a deliberate boycott, stating that he had communicated to the person who had organised the activity for Education Month 2017 that because of other commitments he could not attend.

He also said that he was annoyed when he saw the programme which had a councillor as a guest speaker rather than the regional chairman.

“It is protocol that whenever there is such activity within the region the regional chairman is the guest speaker. In this instance, we had a regional councillor instead as guest speaker. This is not the first instance that something like this has happened and I will not continue to allow it,” he said.

Left only with PPP/C councillors, the regional chairman continued with the meeting but one observer said that doing so was an exercise in futility since there were no note-takers to record minutes.

The Regional Democratic Council (RDC) of Region Five held uneventful meetings last July and August when Ramphal was on annual vacation leave.

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