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City Hall to account for money spent from Govt funding
Deputy City Engineer, Lloyd Alleyne
Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Kellawan Lall, has instructed officials of the Georgetown municipality to begin accounting for the monies entrusted to the entity to undertake enhancement work in the city.
This disclosure was made on Tuesday by Deputy City Engineer, Lloyd Alleyne. He was at the time sharing the city council plans to expand the works that are being funded by the government.
According to Alleyne, the Minister by way of a Memorandum, has asked that “we account for the monies spent so far.” He said that Town Clerk, Yonette Pluck-Cort, is tasked with arranging a meeting between officials of the financial sections of both the Local Government Ministry and the municipality along with members of the Engineer’s Department.
It is anticipated that the meeting will serve to adequately update the Minister on how the monies have been spent so far, Alleyne said.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, earlier this year, had promised financial support to the municipality to the tune of $120M to help with the enhancement of the city. However, the municipality is only able to access $10M on a monthly basis, a move which is only allowable once it is able to make justifiable proposals on how the money will be spent.
Two tranches of the assured sum have already been handed over to the municipality. The first tranche saw unemployed persons residing in the various target communities of Cummingsburg and Lacytown being hired to carry out works such as the manual clearing of parapets and the cleaning of drains.
The second tranche of the financial support was made available last month and according to the Deputy City Engineer the money has already been put into use in various sections of the city.
However, he noted that it has been observed that due to the heavy rain falls there has been rapid growth of grass that had been cut during the works funded by first tranche. This development, he said, has since led to a decision being taken by the municipality to put in place measures to address the problem.
“Part of the agreement was that it was no use that the government spend this money to do the enhancement works and no maintenance is done after. In discussion with the City Engineer and the technical engineers on site it was decided that from the persons we have recruited we would identify persons that we plan to take on for what we are calling a maintenance crew.”
According to Alleyne, the identification of the members of the crew was based on their performance as was relayed by reports received from their supervisors, including facts about their attendance and behaviour.
He related that the maintenance crew will commence their operation from next Monday which will see them ensuring that the enhanced areas are kept in an acceptable condition.
Meanwhile, the municipality has targeted three new areas for the continuation of its enhancement work. Alleyne listed the areas of Tucville, Agricola and Turkeyen.
He disclosed that in the area of Tucville a section has been identified for road works which will be done in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Works.
“The Ministry will provide the material and the workers from the municipality will do preparatory works. Works have already commenced over the last weekend with respect to upgrading and overlaying a section of the identified area.”
He noted, though, that because of the neglect of the drainage system in the area, works such as desilting, and improvement to the parapets will have to be carried out.
And in order to address works in the Agricola and Turkeyen, Alleyne said that the municipality will be meeting with residents. He said that the councillors assigned to the respective communities will be tasked with identifying suitable persons to be employed under the project.
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