Inquiry uncovers 400 phantom workers on City Hall’s payroll

– town clerk given seven days to respond

By Tiffny Rhodius

The Local Government and Regional Development Ministry is contemplating launching another commission of inquiry into the affairs of City Hall following a recent report which cited several irregularities at the municipality, including the discovery of some 400 phantom workers on the payroll. The report, which was prepared by Ramon Gaskin, has implicated the municipality in fraudulent activities and a blatant disregard for procedure. Gaskin was recently appointed to the Implementation Committee to find out why the recommendations of the Burrowes Report, which was released following a 2008 inquiry into the City Treasurer and Town Clerk Department, were not implemented.
Gaskin found that none of the recommendations were implemented. “I myself was totally shocked,”     head of the Implementation Committee Keith Burrowes said. Highlighting some of the irregularities, Burrowes pointed out that out of the seven trucks that were donated to the municipality by government last year, only one is working. “It led us to seeing or believing that it was deliberate to have these trucks line up, because then you had to contract other people,” Burrowes noted.
Even more shockingly, Gaskin found that many of the companies that are contracted with the municipality are dummy companies. Burrowes explained in a press briefing on the report that invoices from these dummy companies did not contain addresses and phone numbers.
Investigations found that many of the businesses were not even registered businesses.  In one instance, the engineer directed the treasurer to make out a cheque valued $8 million to a person instead of a business.
“That raised some eyebrows and we went a little further and found out that there are a number of other companies that they are using that, as far as we are concerned, are dummy companies,” Burrowes. Yet the most disturbing finding, Burrowes revealed, was that City Hall has phantom workers. According to Burrowes, of the 800 staff at City Hall, 400 are phantom workers, but he cautioned that the number may be exaggerated.
City Hall has maintained that the municipality was not overstaffed, but rather understaffed. Burrowes recommended that a mandatory photo check of all workers of the City Hall could clear up whether the municipality has phantom workers. The Gaskin Report also found that the municipality’s overdraft was somewhere in the vicinity of $50 million, and this was the major reason City Hall is unable to pay workers. Burrowes also criticised the municipality for not remitting worker’s NIS monies, and owing millions to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).
Gross misuse of gas and diesel and poor maintenance of computers which were donated were just some of the findings revealed by Burrowes. Gaskin’s report was presented to the town clerk of the municipality on Thursday.
“What we have seen, we have no doubt that these are the facts; however, we cannot make a firm conclusion until you give the council the right to respond,” Burrowes said.   The town clerk has until June 20 to reply to the report. According to Burrowes, City Hall has frustrated the members of the Implementation Committee from the inception which caused many of them to give up on the implementation of the recommendations.
In 2008, Burrowes led an inquiry into the offices of the town clerk and city treasury. The inquiry produced 40 recommendations Burrowes said he will not sit by and watch the hard work of the last inquiry go down the drain. According to Burrowes, City Hall had frustrated the previous team when it came to implementing the recommendations.
Burrowes also noted that the Local Government and Regional Development Ministry has some oversight over City Hall, an assertion the subject minister did not reject.
“The ministry has tolerated to some extent, we are culpable too, because we have allowed for some situations to ride for too long,” Minister Ganga Persaud said. He called the findings of the report “unfortunate” and apologised to Burrowes for not acting sooner. Persaud promised that this time, the ministry will be more proactive in its dealing with City Hall to resolve the current crisis.