SENIOR building inspectors of the Mayor and City Council’s (M&CC) Engineers Department are to be placed before the Human Resources Department for disciplinary action should they continue to work in a lackadaisical manner.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green made the threat at the most recent statutory meeting of the M&CC, while noting that she was tired of receiving complaints against that department, headed by City Engineer Colvern Venture.

“I’m tired of complaints against the engineer’s department involving senior building inspectors. You’re dodging the people, hiding from them, telling them to come back over and over. By the next statutory meeting, if two particular plans are not approved, I will call the names of the officers and have them put before the Human Resources Department,” a furious Chase-Green stated.

On other occasions, citizens are told their plans are on Venture’s desk but when he is called, he claims to know nothing about it, Chase-Green further noted. “People are coming to pay money and you’re saying you’re going to lunch? This is the only agency I see turns away money.”

At a previous meeting, Chase-Green had threatened to take action against Venture if he failed to control the officers under his charge.

“The attitude of those in the engineer’s department stinks; their attitude towards citizens is unacceptable,” she lamented. She said it was high time that some officers from that department go home, because they are at work doing absolutely nothing. “You have officers in the yard liming whole day,” she charged.

Chase-Green pointed out that when these officers are picked up and taken into the fields, they produce the reports months after; and worse yet, give the excuse that they have to revisit the location before submitting the reports.

“These officers are not doing what they’re expected to do,” she said. “I’m tired of hearing the same names over and over again. You have senior officers sitting down doing nothing.”
The mayor also lamented the fact that despite their behaviour, the municipality has to find money to pay their hefty salaries every month. “It is time the nonsense stops,” she said. “If the Engineer cannot take control of the department, we will have to take control of him.”

With respect to allegations in the past of rampant corruption in the City Engineer’s Department, Chase-Green once famously said: “The only time you hear about the City Engineer’s Department, is when they are taking bribes all over the place.”

She had also complained once during a statutory meeting about the abysmal treatment being meted out to the public by the City Engineer’s and City Treasurer’s Departments.
“Go and come, go and come, go and come” is what customers are subjected to, without any consideration being paid to the time and cost that citizens have to expend, the mayor had said.

“You come to the Treasurer’s Department,” she had said, “and you’re told to come back tomorrow; come back the next day; oh, we ain’t get it yet; come back the next day.
“Nobody takes the time to ask if you have the passage to come back, or if you are going to be allowed time off to come back. Sometimes you come for your salary and you hear, ‘Oh come back.’ They don’t know if you’ve got to take your sick child to the doctor with that money, and I am disturbed about that.”