Businessman and civil society activist Clairmont Lye has restated his call for an investigation into the distribution of Rupununi flood aid saying a pall of suspicion and distrust will continue to hang over both the government and the Lethem administration if this is not done.
Lye, in addition, highlighted other concerns in a letter published in Stabroek News last Thursday. There was no immediate response from government officials yesterday despite several attempts to contact relevant persons. The Lethem Citizens’ Committee (LCC) has called for an investigation into the recent distribution of Rupununi flood relief funds, with one its members, Lye, alleging a series of irregularities in the process—including concerns about the authenticity of some names of persons who received the relief.
In response to Lye’s first letter, Sharon Austin of the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs said that an additional list for payment of flood relief was made.
In his letter on Thursday, Lye noted that Austin only responded to one of the points made in his first letter and said the explanation that the ministry was given an additional list of names only prior to their departure for Georgetown “questions the competence and/or honesty of the regional officials if an additional list should be presented four months after the completion of the assessments, and only after objections by residents.”
He pointed out that his first letter addressed four main points, namely who authorized the disbursement of public funds at a political rally; who was responsible for adding to the list, the names of persons who were living on high ground and were not affected by the flood; why were bona fide cases not on the list; and everyone who was severely affected by the flood ought to benefit from the relief fund.
“From the ministry’s letter, it would appear that their officials were present at the rally when residents ‘requested that after the event they be given their cash relief.’ If this is so, then what were government officials doing at such a partisan affair,” he questioned. “I call again for an investigation to be carried out to determine if there was fraud involved in this exercise. For a start, and for the sake of transparency, the list of all the approved names throughout the region should be made available for public scrutiny,” Lye said.
In addition, he said that he understood that an aircraft was chartered by the Ministry of Health a week ago to carry convalescent persons from Georgetown and Lethem back to Gunn’s Strip in the Rupununi. “It is understood that the two passengers who boarded the plane in Lethem were in fact polling agents. The question has to be asked – whose polling agents were they,” Lye wrote.
“Could this be yet another example of abuse of public funds – as was the case of regional vehicles and senior administration officials that were used to put up party flags on lamp poles at night before the PPP rally,” he further asked.
“For as long as these matters are not explained to the satisfaction of Rupununi residents, a pall of suspicion and distrust will continue to hang over both the government and the Lethem administration,” Lye added.
In her letter, Austin had said the ministry issued money to persons on the list which it had received from the region. “But as in any exercise of this nature omissions may occur. Thus, the ministry subsequently received an additional list of persons prior to departing for Georgetown. That list includes residents from Tabatinga and Culvert City. The ministry is currently reviewing this list,” she said.
Austin had said that the ministry had intended to begin distribution of the cash relief on November 7 for Lethem residents but those who were present at the PPP rally requested their money after the event.
Lye, in his first letter, said, that “To my knowledge, all the names of flood relief victims were submitted to the Regional Executive Officer (REO) by early July this year. It is therefore more than perplexing that disbursement to these persons should have taken as long as four months to be implemented and that this exercise should just happen to coincide with the PPP/C’s public meeting on November 6.”
Lye said too that more than 100 valid names were removed from the list while other individuals who were on “high ground” were added to it.
The timing of the payout and the venue used has angered opposition parties and members of the public, who described it as a case of “elections bribery”. However, PPP/C campaign spokesperson Robert Persaud said the distribution of the aid was part of the government’s promise to its people after the flood in June but dissociated the party from the decision of where to distribute the flood relief. Subsequently, the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs said that it only distributed flood aid to Lethem residents following the PPP’s public meeting on Sunday upon the request of residents.
Persaud, in a release, indicated that the distribution of the funds was done in the vicinity of the public meeting site, but Lye said the funds were “brazenly disbursed in the upper floor of Freedom House in Lethem.”
