Delay of financial report to Audit Office is City treasurer’s fault not mine - Royston King

Delay of financial report to Audit Office is City treasurer’s fault not mine – Royston King

Nov 04, 2018 News

Town Clerk, Royston King

Town Clerk of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council, (M&CC) Royston King, has said that the delay of financial records to the Auditor General is due to the sloth of the City Treasurer’s department in preparing the documents.
King was at the time responding to questions from Counsel for the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into City Hall, Sherwin Benjamin.
The COI had previously been supplied with information to the effect that King had been failing to respond to queries from the Audit Office on $500M spending for a cleanup project.
However King told the Commission last Friday that it is the responsibility of the city treasurer to prepare the reports.
“I am only responsible for transmitting the reports to the Audit Office. The information is not supplied by the office of the Town Clerk but through the office of the Town Clerk. As far as I am aware, the City Treasurer Department has been working on supplying those reports to the Audit Office.”
King had been previously accused of failing to respond to requests from the Audit Office which under Municipal and District Council’s Act Chapter 28:01, is an offence.
The issue was brought to the fore by Audit Manager, attached to the Office of the Auditor General, Dhanraj Persaud.
The Audit Manager explained that the failure of a person to comply with the request from auditors as it relates to queries about financial records constitutes a breach of the laws governing such activities.
Persaud noted that given the failure by King to respond to the queries, the Audit Office has not been able to finalize its report for City Hall.
documents were made available to the Commission.
Persaud had told the Commission that the Town Clerk was given the stipulated 30 days to respond to queries in relation to reports on City Hall’s spending of some $500M of government funds for the Restoration of Georgetown Project.
He noted, however, that King is yet to respond to the requests. The Audit Manager explained that based on the records City Hall was provided with half a billion dollars from Ministry Of Communities for the city- wide clean project but huge sums of money remain unaccounted for.
Persaud noted that the Council claimed that the monies were for clearing the city of garbage, repairs to the municipal markets as well as repairs to the City Engineer’s Department, among other things.
However, in one instance, Persaud said that some $70.48M could not be accounted for.
He told the Commission that under the Audit Act of 2004, officials are statutorily bound to respond to request from the Council within a period of 30 days.
The Town Clerk had even requested an additional 30 days to respond. The Audit office granted the request.
That additional 30 days has since expired and there has been no response from the Town Clerk.

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