Latest update April 2nd, 2025 8:00 AM
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Temporary staff breached their agreement
– GECOM
Mr. Gocool Boodoo, the Chief Registration Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), in responding to allegations against that commission, said that the assistant registration officers (ARO), who claimed that the commission is unfair when dealing with their payments, did not volunteer to work.
Rather, they were recruited and trained for temporary service for six months. He added that many of the AROs were given cellular phones, compliments of GTT, with a monthly ceiling of $6,000.
“Many of them did not exceed that amount; they did their work within or slightly over the amount. If they went slightly over the amount, we did not ask them to refund anything.
“But some of them made the bills total $100,000. How do you expect us to use tax money to pay phone bills?”
He further stated that a lot of private calls were made whereas the AROs were given the cellular phones to do GECOM’s official work.
However, the payments to the recruited ARO staff are almost complete, Mr Boodoo said. Some AROs admitted to exceeding the required amount of talk time on the cell phones.
“The others who are complaining are the ones who, to date, cannot account for the missing equipment and the high cell phone bills,” Mr Boodoo said.
The AROs were given equipment such as cameras and scanners to aid in the house-to-house registration project. Some of this equipment cannot be accounted for.
Most of the AROs agreed to pay for the equipment, replace them or have the cost deducted from their salaries.
Boodoo said, “That is reasonable and good accounting process, and many of the AROs paid the extra amount and have owned up to their responsibilities.”
– He said that the AROs have admitted that they made private calls and they accept the fact that they have to pay for them, but only a few are bent on creating mischief.
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