SENIOR officers of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) again could not provide a satisfactory explanation as to why the number of sanitation workers and street orderlies keep fluctuating each month.

But acting Town Clerk, Sharon Harry, has assured that there are no ‘phantoms’ on the council’s payroll and that the officers will be asked to provide supporting documentation when meeting with the relevant committee.

At Tuesday’s statutory meeting, a decision was made for the matter to be dealt with by the Human Resources Management Committee, and Mayor Ubraj Narine charged its Chairman, Councillor Oscar Clarke, with dealing with the matter seriously.

Currently, the City Council could be paying out salaries to persons who do not work in the organisation. “The Human Resources Committee should deal with this issue seriously. There’s a cook-up going on here, but it doesn’t have salt,” the mayor remarked.

It was Councillor Heston Bostwick who brought up the matter again on Tuesday and compared the April report of the Solid Waste Management Department, headed by Walter Narine, with the current reports.

The April report said the department had 10 street orderlies while the current report said three. While the April report shows 38 sanitation workers, the current report said 47.

Fluctuations in the number of workers were also found to exist in the Markets and Public Health Department, the Engineer’s Department and the Human Resources Department.
After the committee looks at the matter, an audit can possibly be arranged to determine if the council is indeed in possession of all of the workers mentioned in the reports, Councillor Patricia Chase-Green suggested.

Two weeks ago, the solid waste director came under fire when he could not explain why the number of workers kept fluctuating.
In an invited comment following Tuesday’s meeting, Narine told the Guyana Chronicle that all of the staff members in his department are accounted for.

“However, it may be a case of correct designations.”

Narine pointed out that sanitation workers and street orderlies perform the same duties and are paid on the same salary scale.
At the previous meeting, Bostwick had argued that since councillors are expected to be transparent and held accountable, officers of the municipality must likewise exhibit the same qualities.

Councillor Oscar Clarke pointed out that the Human Resource Department needs to have knowledge of who is being fired. He said since the questions posed by Bostwick are relevant, there must be proper responses to the observations made. “Don’t let us fool around. Somebody has to tell us.”

The mayor said on the last occasion that the situation is triangular, in that the Human Resources Department and the City Treasury’s Department also must have knowledge of who is being paid by the City Council.

The acting town clerk said that this is a very serious allegation.
“If the report is being padded, it means that the payroll is also being padded,” she observed.