Dear Editor,

I AM in ‘shock and awe’ at statements and responses coming out of Georgetown municipal officials about the appalling state of their finances which was so factually and eloquently alluded to by the President.
One of the pathetic excuses being proffered was that many of the financial challenges faced by the council were inherited from previous town council administrations. These ridiculous claims are first being made by persons who were there for decades and glibly allowed these transgressions to occur. The youngest child is aware that the Georgetown municipality has been under the control of one political group since Guyana’s independence 55 years ago. As the Latins would say, ‘Corvus Oculum Corvi Non Eruit’ “a crow will not pull out the eye of another crow.” Secondly, even if bad things were happening before their time, it was their duty to correct them once they took over responsibility.
Equally ridiculous was the claim that the M&CC is now trying to ‘catch up’ on a backlog of financial statements and that before they could respond to the concerns raised by the President that these concerns needed to be ‘particularised’. Oh Please! The list is extremely long and well known to most persons.

With many documents destroyed through alleged flood damage, with a lot having disappeared that were allegedly misplaced and with many former finance department staffers no longer within reach, ‘catching up’ would be impossible. And they know that. Their hope is probably for the life of this Council to come to an end before the ‘catching up’ occurs.
But with no qualified accounts coming out of the Council in more than 15 years, an entity that rakes in billions of dollars each year from citizens, it certainly makes the Georgetown municipality one of the most disreputable agencies in the entire country.
I guess when the auditors are finished doing their work at City Hall, those very persons who are feigning ignorance about the horrid state of Council’s finances will be ‘heading for the hills’ when everything is ‘particularised’.

Yours sincerely,

Anu Bihari