City Hall unable to pay staff on time, still advertising vacancies

− “Not overstaffed, under financed”−Town Clerk

By Ramona Luthi

Town Clerk of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), Royston King has said that one of the reasons why employees of City Hall are not being paid their salary and wages in a timely manner, is because the Council is owed $16 billion in taxes.

According to King, they are currently working on levelling the fields in meeting the needs of citizens and paying employees.

“What we are doing now is striking a balance between reaching out to citizens and taking care of our workers.”

He highlighted that the previous administration was involved in two kinds of “corruptions” namely, “Corruption of Omission” and “Corruption of Commission,” which is why they were always able to pay staff in a timely manner.

“Corruption of Commission is when you put your hands in the bag, when you commit fraud, when you steal from the organisation. There’s the Corruption of Omission, where you collect monies to do things that you’re supposed to do and don’t do it,” he explained.

King asserted that because the new Council has been utilising the monies of tax payers to “better the facilities in Georgetown, as it was meant to do”, there have been times when workers would be paid later than they are supposed to.

He said “the easiest thing for us to do in this Council is to pay salaries. I can pay salaries on time every month. It is the easiest thing to do. All I need to do is not do any works at all in the City. All I need to do is don’t clean drains, don’t do roads, and don’t do anything at all in the City and pay salaries. That was what was happening before this administration took house.”

King said it is because the M&CC has been making visible progress through the cleanup campaign, restorations of buildings and many other projects, that employees have not conducted “strikes” and still continue to work.

“We couldn’t spend all the money on them and they understand that there are times when we will be short on their part and other times when we will be short on the part of our citizens,” he relayed.

At the meeting, the Town Clerk admitted that City Hall is cash-strapped, adding that the blame fell on the business owners who refused to pay their required taxes, which he lamented was in excess of $16 billion.

“When you think about the Teleformance building, paying $16,000 a year! When you think that we have not collected until now, any money from the Giftland Mall, with that wide expanse of land, the vast squats of land along the East Coast, where people are building gated communities, we’re not collecting any money! When you think of the business community having an excess of $16 billion, when we’ve had to slash container fees from $25,000 to $5000, and when many of the revenue generating projects were taken away from us, leaving us with the responsibilities… you get to see the picture why we’re in this! We have extremely limited money, and we have to take care of our local communities!” King lamented.

According to the Town Clerk, the M&CC had exceeded its spending limits during the country’s Jubilee celebrations in what he described as an act to save Guyana from the embarrassment in the faces of tourists who came.

“When we had Jubilee celebrations, we overstretched ourselves, because if we didn’t do that, we would have been embarrassed. The city was so filthy that we had to actually credit work from contractors to get the work done…Imagine that!”

King went on to declare that City Hall was “not overstaffed” but rather “under financed.”

However, even in light of this revelation, the Town Clerk also highlighted at the Statutory Meeting that City Hall has vacancies and are advertising for yet another Assistant Town Clerk.