Dharamlall confident executing enlarged budget with reduced staff

Feb 10, 2022 News

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…as MPs haggle over packages paid to Advisors, Mayors, others

Kaieteur News – Yesterday, the 65 Members of the National Assembly met for a third consecutive day to continue its examination of the specific allocations in this year’s $552.9B Budget with Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall, informing the House that government is confident that despite the Ministry’s enlarged Budget over the previous year and reduced staff, each of the programmes for which monies have been allocated will be executed.

A bone of contention which the members haggled about was the package paid to government MP Dharamkumar Seeraj, who is employed as a Ministerial Advisor.
Coalition Member of Parliament, Ganesh Mahipaul, in posing his enquiries suggested that the MP was in fact being handed some $1.5M as a salary, inclusive of other benefits.
To this end, the Minister was vehement in his position of not disclosing a figure save to say that the individual was being paid on the GS14 pay scale and that the advisor was in fact being paid far less than what the ousted coalition had been paying its advisors and other political employees.
Recognising that Mahipaul was a “causality” of one of the programmes in the Ministry—since he was terminated as Community Development Officer (CDO) within the Ministry during the more than five years that the coalition administration had been in office—Minister Dharamlall said that he is yet to see any work completed by the member during his tenure with the Ministry.
The MPs having resolved into a Committee of Supply commenced the proceedings by scrutinising a $363.8M current allocation for the Ministry’s Policy Development and Administration department which had seen an increase for salaries to be paid despite a reduction in the staffing complement.

FULL DISCLOSURE
In providing his response to the House however, Minister Dharamlall was adamant that there are former advisors, currently opposition MPs, including Devin Sears, Jermaine Figueira, who he said had been earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the coffers with nothing to show for it.
“I have not seen any I’s dotted by any of these advisors that APNU (A partnership for National Unity) had in their government,” Minister Dharamlall insisted, adding that “I have not seen Mahipaul one day report what he has done and what he intended to do during the five years he worked there; there must be full disclosure.”
Adamant, “this is serious business,” the Minister said that the former advisor to the previous Minister had been earning far more than the successor and further, it was his prerogative as Minister to employ MP Seeraj as his advisor—an advisor who, he said, is doing a fantastic job in promoting the work of the Ministry.

Referencing the pay scale GS14 identified by the Minister as the salary paid to Seeraj, Mahipaul was quick to point out that there is an upper and lower cap for this scale and further there are other benefits included for which the House was not being provided with answers.
Addressing the current expenditure allocated for spending under the Programme Head of Regional Development, the matter of staffing and emoluments was again a matter of contention.
This time around, Mahipaul sought to ascertain whether the documented decrease in the staffing complemented the fact that there was an increased Budget. Minister Dharamlall responded in the affirmative stating, “we have a philosophy in government that a bloated government is not a solution to our problems; employing people very wildly would not resolve the problem but it’s how we manage the resources that we have.”
Conceding, “we have a massive budget,” the Minister was adamant “I believe there is enough competence in the Ministry and they will be able to engage in all of the resources covered under this programme.”

AMAZED
Pressed again on the capacity of the Ministry, given the noted reduction in staff compliment under other programme heads that would have seen increased allocations, Mahipaul queried whether there was also a reduction in technical staffers.
According to Minister Dharamlall however, “Mahipaul is one of the casualties of one of the programmes and I think that is what is hurting Mahipaul.”
To this end, he sought to explain that the increased catered for, among other things, the increase in salaries paid to public servants.
He was adamant too, his Ministry’s staff “is extremely competent because they are the ones who put the budget together and I believe and they believe that they are going to be able to execute this budget.”
Notably during the consideration of this programme head, the Minister sarcastically dismissed a question posed by Opposition MP Nina Flo-Bess, who sought a disaggregation of a $2.6M allocation under a line item ‘other.’
To this end, Minster Dharamlall—true to form—responded, “…we have a multi-billion dollar budget and a member is asking about $2.6M; imagine that, like seriously, I am amazed.”
He, nonetheless, informed the House that the money would be used for notices, advertisements, radio programmes, signage, markings, work study stipends and other payments.
During the examinations of the $1.3B allocation in the Estimates for the Ministry’s Local Government Development Department, the House heard of a likely slush fund being used by the Ministry and that at least one Deputy Mayor had not been paid for about seven months.
Mahipaul told the MPs that the Mahdia Deputy Mayor had not receive a stipend for some seven months now to which the Minister told the House it was the first he had heard of the matter.
He further contended that the Georgetown Mayor, Ubraj Narine, had complained of the same thing only to find out that he did not actually collect it.
Some $290M has been allocated in this year’s Budget to pay the 20 Mayors and Deputy Mayors, Regional Chairpersons, Overseers and others.

SLUSH FUND
When it was pointed out to the Minster however, that the salaries identified could not account for the total allocation, he told the House he was unable to provide specific information on what the remainder of the allocation would be spent on.
This led MP Mahipaul to impute that he had possibly identified a slush fund for the Ministry. A position vehemently denied by Minister Dharamlall who was adamant “this is not a slush fund, it caters for other expenses, many of which will be announced to the public in the very near future.”
Pressed for additional details, Minister Dharamlall told the House, “…there are some proposals that would be announced in the very near future.”
He was adamant however, that the initiatives will redound to the benefit of the councillors across the country but without the specificity, Mahipaul posited, “I think I just found a slush fund.”
The House learnt too that this year, the government has allocated some $650M to cater for the management of the Haags Bosch Landfill at Eccles East Bank Demerara (EBD)—a site which capacity is currently being depleted exponentially by ExxonMobil Guyana.
On the matter of the $165M allocation for the Local Government Commission, Mahipaul in posing his question expressed the belief that there would have been a breakdown of the allocations as is the case with Constitutional Agencies.
Minister Dharamlall was adamant however that the Local Government Commission is not a Constitutional Agency.
He, nonetheless, informed the House that the pay scales for Commissioners range from $232,000 to $696,000 before going on to read each of the allocations for the Commission.
When he was completed, the Speaker of the House informed the MPs that the time allocated for the considerations of the current expenditure for the Ministry was exhausted and had in fact gone over time.
To this end, the allocations were put to a vote which was unsurprisingly approved to be included for spending under the authority of the imminent passage of the Appropriations Act for this year.

 

 

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