Georgetown : Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Norman Whittaker denied of an opportunity to address the City’s councillors at their statutory meeting by Mayor Hamilton Green.
The Minister had written to the Mayor informing him of his intention to engage the Council on some their concerns and issues. The Mayor responded positively by way of email. However, the Deputy Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green subsequently wrote to the Minister suggesting that June 30 be the date for his presence at the Council’s meeting.
Minister Whittaker said that he told Chase-Green that he had spoken to the Mayor and informed her of the Mayor’s positive response.
At the opening of the Council’s meeting, the Mayor did not even acknowledge the Minister’s presence; instead the Mayor and his Councillors spent over 50 minutes over grammatical errors that were made in the minutes of the previous meeting.
“What you have here is a demonstration of what City Council spends most of its time doing… engaging in semantics, nothing productive…the Deputy Mayor spent 20 minutes talking about what I consider to be foolishness…they have spoken nothing about the role they can play, no questions about the clean-up…they are wasting taxpayers’ money, the people want to hear about what they can do to make a difference about this flooding,” the Local Government Minister said.
Some of the issues the Minister had intended to address were that of councillors’ stipend, fuel for the Mayor and most importantly, the services that they should be providing to the residents of the City.
Minister Whittaker said that from the level of his Ministry, he is trying his best to assist the Council, so much so, that in the massive clean-up programme, he has ensured that resources are put aside to help the City Council fix some of their compactor trucks and excavators so that they can assist to sustain the City after the clean-up programme.
The chief engineer and the solid waste director were all part of the planning of the clean up exercise. The project proposal for the cleanup op the cemetery was done by the council. The Ministry is in the process of placing advertisements in the newspapers with the hope of getting bids within a fortnight
Once the bids are in, an assessment will be done in terms of drainage, especially with regards to the main canals. Additionally, a number of drains, kokers, sluices and internal drains will be cleaned, as well as Le Repentir Cemetery.
With regards to the issue of stipend, the Minister said that Councillors cannot sit at home and expect to receive stipends. He explained that they have an obligation to attend the statutory meetings, visit communities and interact with people to find out what their concerns are.
In terms of fuel for the Mayor, the Minister advised that this issue should be discussed at the level of the works committee before it is taken to be adopted or passed at the statutory meeting.
“I am not about to make funds available to City Council when the information and records in my possession tell me that there have been misspending of public funds,” the Minister asserted.
the Government is spending $500M to clean up the City and $200M on the rehabilitation of City Hall. Additionally, there is a $21M subvention allocated under the 2014 national budget for the Council; however to date, the Mayor and his Councillors have failed to come up with a proposal on how the money should be spent.
Minister Whittaker questioned, “How can we take taxpayers’ money and give you and you don’t even have a plan and you seem disorganised and disoriented?”
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