…to burn in government

It’s only money…

The news that the Government spent almost $3 billion from the Contingency Fund boggles even your Eyewitness’ jaded mind. Talk about profligacy!! After all, the Contingencies Fund is for spending the Government didn’t anticipate when it presented its Budge in our case back in February. So we’re talking about spending an additional $3 billion on top of the $320 billion that was budgeted then!!

Back in the day when “a million dollars” still meant something, an American politician looked sceptically at his government’s spending and remarked, “A billion here, and a billion there…and pretty soon you’re talking about REAL money!” He was being ironic about the profligacy of the American boondoggles. But even with our Monopoly money, GY$3 billion is still real money to blow in a couple of months on “unforeseen circumstances”. So the question is…where did all that money go?

Well we heard that $406 million was spent to complete the “Jubilee Park” on top of the $73 million allocated in the Budget but given the more politically correct handle of “Durban Park Development Project”!! This of course, was after some still anonymous “businessman” spent still unknown hundreds of millions to take the project to its “halfway” state. At that time when the project moved from the Ministry of the Presidency to Infrastructure, Minister Patterson had claimed he would use $150 million from a “line item” in his budget and get the remainder from “grants”.

So the question is – didn’t the government know when the budget was prepared in February what the Durban Park project would cost? Did they believe the anonymous business man would’ve shelled out $1 billion which is what this white elephant cost by the most conservative estimate as a “”political investment” as was described by Minister Trotman? Or did they think he was just being patriotic?

As for the rest of the spending, in an unrelated transaction, $501 million was allocated to BK as part payment on the $1.8 billion agreed to for relinquishing claims on Haags Bosch landfill site. A sense of the kind of spending that actually went into purchasing anything tangible was $20 million spent by the GDF to procure “maps and writing materials” to facilitate the Jubilee Celebrations. Obviously the GDF, being more familiar with Jungle Warfare, needed maps and instructions to traverse the treacherous terrain of Georgetown.

But what can you say? It’s clear this government has its priorities about what’s “important” and needs attention and spending. Calls for “stimulus spending” by wage earners and businesses to get the economy rolling, has clearly fallen on barren soil.

Pomp and parades takes precedence.

…your money for Parking

In case you had any doubts the Parking Meter scam was a done deal, the Attorney General’s pronouncement on the contract it was “examining”, should disabuse you of that misguided notion. After weeks of “scrutinisation” the mountain produced a mouse – the contract “too heavily” favours the contractor!! You think?!

Nothing about the most opaque process since the Nazis had Germans contractors bid to construct their Concentration Camps!! We knew why THAT had to be kept under wraps, but why the secrecy by the Gang of Four at City Hall on Parking Meters. The Mayor’s explanation that they didn’t want any “industrial espionage” launched doesn’t even deserve a snicker.

Now since this the first significant activity by a Local Government institution since the LGE, we hope the government understands the rest of the officials in the NDC’s and other Municipalities are beginning to salivate at the signal of what’s the “new” dispensation.

The cut has now jumped form 10% to “whatever the traffic can bear”!!

…to throw down black (walkway) hole

Your Eyewitness was shocked at the pic of the hole in the walkway of the school at Kato. What a construction travesty, he muttered.

Now he hears the hole was made by the inspector to measure the thickness of the concrete!!

A set up?