Some Ministers seem to disregard the President’s instructions

Dear Editor,
I had written His Excellency David Granger after writing the Permanent Secretaries and Ministers in the Ministries and receiving no response. In my experience, when writing the President, his responses always come very quickly. In his letter sent to me on (2016.09.06), he carbon copied it to the Communities Minister for necessary action. However, the Minister never responded despite several calls, letters and emails from my secretariat.
On another matter, the President copied his reply to the Finance Minister and stated that this Minister would respond and handle the important matter. To date, the Finance Minister has not written our company. This is causing terrible financial strain on us as Government has a way of owing monies but not wanting to paytersinterest on the amount.
As a contractor, I am committed by law to pay my workers irrespective of whether the company was paid or not. How is our business expected to survive? At certain times, the regions and other Ministries would have caused delays in our payments, forcing us into an overdraft which had to be repaid at an expensive interest rate. Added to that, whenever a year passes and we are not paid by the end of that year, it is referred to as “previous years” and this becomes a matter for the court and parties must wait until the end of the next year to resolve payment.
At this juncture, we are owed millions of dollars. Our company, being obligated by law, has had to continue paying PAYE, NIS deductions for our workers and we have paid VAT where applicable. Our quarterly taxes, licensing fees, etc, have all been honoured.
RK’s Guyana Security Services, through me as their representative, would have obtained two judgements on November 4, 2016 and March 31, 2016 respectively: Action No. 587-C/D of 2015 and Action No. 1305-C/D of 2015. Recent letters were written by our Attorney-at-Law, K A Juman-Yasin on the January 3, 2017, and May 2, 2017 to the Attorney General advising him of the judgments and that payments should have been forthcoming. Unfortunately, no response was ever received; this encompasses an acknowledgement of our correspondences. Our Attorney would have sent copies of these letters to the President and the Finance Minister.
In my opinion, it appears that the Government seems only willing to pay judgements and outstanding debts to the local and foreign multibillion-dollar corporations. This is referenced to cases involving DDL, BK Group of Companies, Rudisa Beverage and others. All of which the Government settled and issued compensation.
The biggest travesty is that non-payment of these monies would have forced us to give up our regional contracts, causing approximately 400 workers to be sent home earlier this year in March. ? It is unfortunate that the entire process has been stymied due to what I view as negligence and unwillingness by certain senior officers in Government, over the years.
One can only hope that this Government will recognise their part in this and move to rectify the situation.

Yours sincerely,
Roshan Khan Sr
CEO/Chairman/
Founder
RK’s Guyana Security
Services