Dear Editor,
The refusal by the Town Clerk of Georgetown to accept and place on the agenda of Council for its statutory Meeting, a motion to be discussed regarding the holding of a forensic audit of the Georgetown Municipality, is just simply shocking, shameful and dictatorial.
There could be no valid excuse for this autocratic action, other than it being a self-serving act to prevent the discovery of something that a forensic audit would reveal to the public.
The excuse given that the motion was not properly prepared and therefore could not be tabled, is simply outrageous.
One should remember once, when the Council wanted to get rid of a previous Town Clerk, a Councillor and former Mayor merely scribbled a handwritten motion on a flimsy half sheet of paper and submitted it at the meeting which was accepted, tabled, moved and seconded, in spite of syntactic and grammatical errors, and in fact resulted in the removal of this officer.
The Town Clerk is no legal expert, and the motion was examined by qualified attorneys at law before being submitted and was found to be in order. In any case, it is the duty of the Mayor who is the Chairperson of the Meetings, and of the Council and the Town Clerk who is the Secretary of the Council and the Meetings, to upon receiving a motion that they believe to be improper to sit with that Councillor who submitted the motion that is purportedly incorrect, and show him or her the defects and have them expeditiously corrected and placed on the agenda.
Instead, what they are doing is ducking from the motion fortnight after fortnight with the excuse that it is faulty merely as an excuse to delay its placement on the order paper, whilst maybe they are scurrying to get their financial records in order.
This is just disgraceful! The Minister of Communities should have all of their financial records seized and handed over to competent auditors, or the Auditor General of Guyana should confiscate their records and order an audit, whilst sending the culpable officers on administrative leave to prevent continued interference.
The citizens of Georgetown must no longer be held ransom by Georgetown Municipality.
Sincerely,
James Mc Onnell
