Oscar Clarke points finger at staff for City Hall’s financial mess

Mar 10, 2018 News

City Treasurer, Ron McCalmont

Chairman of the Mayor and City Council’s Finance Committee (M&CC), Councillor Oscar Clarke, said that the concerns generated over the financial management of the city are mainly due to the staffing of the treasurer’s department.
Speaking with Kaieteur News this week on the $3.1B budget proposed for 2018 amidst concerns from the Auditor General’s office about the lack of proper accountability of government funds, Clarke pointed to the lack of adequate human resources in the treasury department.
“The systems down there need to be changed and I believe the Auditor General is discovering that in his examinations,” Clarke stated.
City Treasurer, Ron McCalmont, has been overseeing the department. He was summoned before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee to answer for expenditure of Government funds, but he was absent due to illness.
Clarke, a former General Secretary of the People’s National Congress (PNC), explained that McCalmont has been repeatedly ill. At the same time, the department is without a deputy and a budget manager.
“That is the problem we have. I don’t think the leadership there has been sufficiently attuned to getting things done properly. This is not a matter for Oscar Clarke; this is a matter for the full council. It is a matter for us going forward whoever the council is. Everybody will have the same problem that the committee and I have. Until we make the desirable changes in the treasurer’s department giving them the kind of staff and accountability it deserves, we will continue to have problems,” Clarke stated.
During the PAC meeting, it was revealed that state auditors have not received vouchers, statements of expenditure or any piece of document that can verify that City Hall spent $173.5M.
This amount included, Kitty Market, $60M; constabulary training school, $23.9M; city engineer building, $13.5M; constabulary headquarters, $12.9M; Albouystown clinic, $21.5M; and office equipment and furniture, $42.1M.
State auditors have also been trying to verify the purchase of furniture.
There are questions about the $300M allotted for Georgetown restoration programme in 2015. Some $6.2M was expended to purchase a double cab pick-up for the city police; $52.1M for debushing the Le Repentir Cemetery and $241.6M for the restoration of Georgetown.
Hundreds of Payment vouchers were examined and several discrepancies observed.
Auditors found 167 instances totalling $159.9 M where there was no evidence of the payment vouchers.
There were instances where approval by the city treasurer was not seen on 140 payment vouchers totalling $143.7M; no evidence of the city’s financial committee approving 48 payments totalling $48.4M; no evidence of receipt or payee acknowledgement for a payment of $750,000 to a contractor and the basis of award of several contracts for the weeding or parapet, desilting of drains and cutting down of trees.
Clarke stated that most of the documents requested by the Auditor General has been handed over within the past week.

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