What kind of authority Surajbali has at GECOM?

Aug 06, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My understanding of the nature of GECOM is that it is not a private body although it is independent of Government. I know it is funded by money from the State. If my description is correct then, Steve Surujbally is a highly paid public sector employee even though I am aware that in the technical sense of the term, he is not a mainstream public sector worker.
But I would insist his salary does not come from private employers. I may be wrong but I am told when take-home pay and allowances are added up, Dr. Surujbally’s package is well over a million monthly.
I am curious as a layman to know how large or how restricted is the authority of the Chairman of GECOM within the operations of GECOM. Let me digress briefly. I worked at the University of Guyana for 26 years and my knowledge of the authority of the Vice-Chancellor over the entire university is deeply clear. If the Faculty of Technology does not pay the paper vendor, the Vice-Chancellor can order the Finance Director to pay the man immediately.
I know the jurisdiction the Governor of the Bank of Guyana has. He can direct the accountant to pay a restaurant that delivered food but is still to receive payment. Does Surujbally have similar power at GECOM where he is chairman?
Since May 2015 GECOM is still to pay three interior residents for transportation services supplied during the 2015 general elections. These are social, the morbidities of this country I hate with the deepest of emotional rage. Those three persons are not even in a distant way, wealthy people. Why in this country do ordinary people have to live in a torture chamber? Let us say they had to wait weeks after the election. But fifteen months and still no remuneration?
I keep emphasizing the point that such endless wait cannot have a scientific explanation because the smallness of the population does not allow for this to happen. The explanation is simple and commonsensical. If I have to mark 10 papers, the school will get the spread sheet the same day. If I have to mark 200 papers, the school cannot get the marked sheet hours after. The reason is time. It takes more paper work to pay a thousand persons than if the employees were just ten.
In a country with a small population like Guyana, the ministries take months to pay contractors, business places and others that have done work for the Government. Mr. Larry London who was in charge of the Durban Park project admitted that over $200 million is owed to small contractors. His explanation had a touch of cynicism. He said paper work is the culprit. What paper work?
As an educated Guyanese who has lived for over sixty years I can say there is no such nonsense as paper work.
These contractors are not paid as yet because of brain work, psychological work, not paper work. Post-colonial Guyana is psychologically broken. Where was the paper work when in July 2015, a vast amount of accounting was quickly done to calculate salary increases for every junior and senior minister? Where was paper work when the increases were quietly gazetted?
If paper work is the answer to governmental slowness then those salary hikes, done in July 2015 should have been completed in July 2016 and then gazetted in July 2017.
Amerindian rights activists, Peter Persaud, wrote the Chairman of GECOM for the monies owed to these people. Surujbally responded to Persaud pointing to the jurisdiction of the Chief Election Officer. My question is, if Surujbally is Chairman of GECOM, why can’t he get GECOM bureaucracy to move in the direction of paying these people shortly after Persaud wrote him?
We know about the three persons from the interior because Persaud highlighted it. But there must be dozens even hundreds of small earners that GECOM still owes.
This columnist is saying in the most unambiguous way that I believe others are still to be paid by GECOM. When you take into the analysis that the CARIFESTA Secretariat still owes low income persons, and the Durban Park project still owes dozens of contractors, one is forced to ask the question; ‘How can any country be so insensitive and cruel to its low income citizens?’
What irks me is that Surujbally and his Chief Election Officer are people with huge salaries so it makes you wonder if they could be bothered with three small persons from Mabaruma. Surujbally wrote back to Persaud to say that his CEO is on vacation. I wonder if it is an expensive holiday.

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What kind of authority Surajbali has at GECOM?

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