…it would be impractical for central gov’t to hand over funds – says Jagdeo

THE lack of accountability and transparency at the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (MC&CC) makes it impractical for central government to be able to continue to directly hand over money to the municipality.

This is the contention of Vice-President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, who pointed out that in the past, funds were directly handed over to the M&CC for designated projects, but the money was spent without the identified project being completed.
“They collect all the revenue from the city which runs into billions and spend it on themselves, and we must then take additional taxpayers’ money, give it to them and then they can’t account for it?

“They get a substantial subvention every year. Adequacy is based on their perception. That is why we look at the total spending in the city,” the Vice President asserted on Friday during an interview with some members of the press.

Mayor of Georgetown, Ubraj Narine, has often decried the lack of increased funding for the local government organ from central government, but the Vice-President argued that City Hall has proven that it cannot be trusted to handle the proper disbursement and management of funding allocated.
“If we handed the money to them to do a single road that we’re doing in the city, they would spend every cent of the money and the road will never be built.

“We’ve had that experience before, where you give them money for a dedicated purpose and at the end of the year, they say we had to use it for something else. They have to buy some vehicles, or they had to buy something else, or somebody make two trips abroad. That is all the money gets spent on, even when it’s earmarked,” the Vice-President contended.

Over the years, City Hall has developed a well-documented reputation for lack of accountability of its own funds, as well as the funds allocated by central government. Issues at the municipality have included lack of financial records, damage to financial documents, lack of contracts being issued for multimillion dollar projects; lack of proper procurement practices and lack of audits.

When audits are conducted, the Office of the Auditor General has often conveyed the difficulties encountered in ensuring proper spending of public funds by City Hall.
In addition to revenues garnered through collection of rates and taxes, the M&CC, like all municipalities across the country, is given an annual subvention. However, though other townships would get $18 million, City Hall is allotted $30 million.

Additionally, from 2016–2019, City Hall was the beneficiary of an accumulated $1 billion of funding from central government under the Georgetown Restoration Programme (GRP). Auditing of this fund has been a multi-year bugbear for the AG’s office.
Under GRP, City Hall had received incremental disbursements of $300 million in 2015, $200 million in 2016, $200 million in 2018, and $300 million in 2019. The funds were disbursed by the now disbanded Ministry of Communities (MoCs) under the former APNU+AFC administration, which was in office from 2015 – 2020.

The money from the GRP was initially directly handed over to City Hall, but was later handled by the MoCs after multiple reports of mismanagement. Several companies made allegations against City Hall of completing works for projects under this programme and never receiving their full payments, even though all the money under the programme was expended.

From the 2016 allocation, the M&CC could not produce any evidence accounting for some $70.489 million out of the $200 million given; prior to that, in the 2015 allocation, there was no evidence of payments totalling $12.816M.
In November 2017, the APNU+AFC Cabinet also gave its approval for a grant of $475.635 million to be disbursed to M&CC through the MoCs. However from these monies, the Auditor General was unable to verify the completeness, accuracy and validity of amounts totalling $374.545 million. There is also no accountability for a 10-year gap in the financial accounts at City Hall.

As a result, Jagdeo argued that the current administration of the M&CC does not have development as its focal point, but is in fact more preoccupied with the matter of politics.
The Vice-President posited that the mayor in particular is not genuine in his call to reach out and hold meetings with the central government to work in tandem for the betterment of the city, but is instead concerned about addressing personal matters.

“They are not real partners. They are not genuinely concerned about development. It’s just about a game of politics for them. They come there [to meetings] and at the first sign of pressure, they lie. When have we not been willing to work with anyone regardless of their political affiliation?” Dr Jagdeo questioned.

“The mayor only want to reach out to fix his problems.  It’s often about personal things. That’s what they want to meet the President on.”
The Vice-President urged citizens of Georgetown to hold the M&CC more accountable when they are not satisfied with the performance of the municipality, particularly given the state of the capital city as it pertains to the solid waste and drainage situations.

“If the citizens of Georgetown are so serious about service, then they should come forth to change the party that has run this place as their personal property,” he said.
City Hall is run by a 30-seat Council of which 21 of the seats are held by the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) led by the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU); two seats are held by the Alliance For Change (AFC), and seven by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).