Willful waste of money

Jun 04, 2015 Editorial

Disclosures that the previous government was dispensing money like a tap dispensing water has indeed come as a shock to the many taxpayers who each day must struggle to make ends meet. One glaring case involves the government recruiting an individual who left these shores for whatever reason to reside in Canada.
There is no shortage or reportorial skills in Guyana so for the government to reach out to Canada and recruit an individual who is at best mediocre to perform duties at the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry and to pay that person US$7,333 per month ($1.5M) per month can only be a case of cronyism.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The new government has found nearly two dozen people, who were paid to monitor Facebook, write letters to the press and harass and abuse anyone who dared to criticize the government. Millions of dollars had to be spent on this.
Who were these people? Certainly friends of Kwame McCoy who had a knack for inviting his friends to work in Office of the President. Then there were the gifts to various other friends and relatives. In one case where a friend of the government opted to sue the government immediately the Office of the Attorney General opted to pay compensation of more than $200 million.
In the case of the Commissioners hired to conduct the Rodney Commission of Inquiry the government literally shelled out money on what could only be described as a holiday for the three Commissioners. The People’s National Congress and many others concluded that the Commission was intended to indict the PNC.
The only evidence that the Commission considered were those that seemed to implicate the PNC. And there was a lot of hearsay. For this the government paid millions of dollars. People who offered contradictory evidence were left to fend for themselves. One man who was brought from Cayenne is still to receive the money he spent to get here and to return home. He was never cross examined and it is now unlikely that he ever will.
But it is the government spending on all manner of things that the nation was never made aware of that boggles the mind. And to aid its cause, the government hired many contract employees to work in the various departments and Ministries. Where queries arose the authorities never deigned to provide answers.
To this day, there has never been an answer on the outcome of the fraud probe at the National Communications Network, a probe that was completed even before Donald Ramotar became President in 2011.
Guyana and its assets had become the property of the national leaders, to dispose of as they saw fit. Hundreds of acres of state lands were given to private developers who in turn made millions of dollars, courtesy of the government.
And as if to highlight that the misuse of funds is not accidental the government announced the further disbursement of a further $1 billion ostensibly to clean up the city and other parts of Guyana. Perhaps the only visible evidence of any work done of consequence for the $500 million is found in Le Repentir cemetery.
That was overgrown. In fact, it had become a veritable jungle. The money released by the PPP Government saw the removal of the tall trees and the return of the cemetery to a place that could be accessed by those who wanted to use the facility.
But for the rest of the city, one cannot say anything. Today, some six months after that the government is trying to find money to effect another cleanup. All the government would say when asked about the use of the $500 million is that there will have to be forensic audit to find it.
What we do know is that the drains continue to be blocked as are the outfall channels so that at the slightest shower the city floods. At the start of the week the city was under water and one wondered where the $500 million went.

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