City Mayor to seek Treasurer’s advice on inability to pay salaries

Jul 10, 2019 News

Mayor of Georgetown Ubraj Narine in an interview on Monday, said that he will have to approach the City Treasurer, John Douglas, on the way forward with regard to securing employees’ salaries for this month.

Georgetown Mayor Ubraj Narine

The Mayor had indicated that the Council is in a critical financial position. He said that he had inherited $4 billion in debt when he assumed office.
He said that while the Council may not be able to pay salaries, it is also faced with the issue of having to secure ‘back pay packages’ for employees, dating back as far as 2016.
Narine asserted that these debts would have accumulated as a result of the failure of the Mayor’s office, before his tenure, to collect rates and taxes from businesses and individuals.
Narine added that in a six-month period he was able to reduce a whopping $32M owed to the Council for taxes to $14M, by using the ‘Amnesty Method’ which allowed those in arrears to pay a percentage of the sums they owed to the council.
According to the Mayor, this strategy has seen more persons coming to settle their arrears.
The Mayor said that he hates excuses and complaints. He however said that he has a vision for the upliftment of the City of Georgetown.
This will take three years to become reality.
He however explained that this also will need large sums of cash to execute, hence the importance of the Council successfully collecting all rates and taxes owed.

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