Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee has said that ample information was given to support the allocations for expenditure by his ministry under Financial Paper 9/2011, which was recently rejected by the opposition in the National Assembly.
APNU MP Carl Greenidge two weeks ago said that the government brought the proposed allocations back to the National Assembly with no changes whatsoever and he considered this contemptuous of the Parliament.
The rejected expenditure included government’s request for approval for money spent from the Contingencies Fund for honorarium paid to workers at the General Register’s Office (GRO) and for the purchase of radio sets for the Guyana Police Force, both of which fall under the Home Ministry. Regarding the money for the workers of the GRO, Greenidge said the government had ample opportunity to bring the request to the National Assembly and have it cleared as soon as possible after September, when the spending took place. Concerning the request for an allocation for the purchase of security equipment, he said, “We don’t know what the equipment is for.” He asked how the need for the purchase of this equipment could be unanticipated. “There was no explanation as to why it was urgent….”
In a statement issued on Friday, Rohee said he had committed to provide the National Assembly with vouchers and other relevant documentation with respect to payments made to staff at the GRO for work done to facilitate registration of voters during the extended claims and objections period in preparation for last year’s elections. “I also committed to provide receipt of payments for the rental of radio communication sets for intelligence gathering during the elections,” he added.
He said that APNU MP Winston Felix had asked whether there were vouchers in support of the claim to pay the honorarium to the GRO employees and he had directed him to visit the GRO to examine the records.
With regard to the radio sets, Rohee noted that the work of the Guyana Police Force at elections time sometimes appears to be insurmountable and overwhelming. “Though the Police Force would have purchased a number of pieces of communication equipment, it became obvious that what they had was not sufficient. You may want to call it bad planning, but I do not think that really matters. What matters is how effective the force was during the electoral period. I think that at the end of the day it is the effectiveness of the Guyana Police Force and of law enforcement in general that really matters,” Rohee recalled saying during the previous debate on the expenditure.
In responding to a question posed by an Opposition member, Rohee had stated in Parliament that having procured a certain number of radio communication sets, the GPF was confronted with a situation where the Guyana Elections Commission announced far more polling stations than were anticipated. “Now obviously you cannot go through the usual tendering process to be able to procure the equipment on time for the police ranks. So what do you do? Do you sit on your hands, or do you make a decision to rent the equipment rather than purchase it? To purchase would require an inordinate amount of time. You have to have some flexibility and expediency in treating with the matter,” Rohee had said.
He said that subsequently, Volda Lawrence of APNU asked that the House be provided with a breakdown for the cost of rental of the radio sets and the period for which the sets were rented. “I agreed to provide the information requested,” he said, adding that he dispatched to the Clerk of the National Assembly on March 14, 2012 copies of the vouchers and other relevant documents with respect to payment of the honorarium to the staff at GRO and receipts of payments for rental of radio communication sets for intelligence gathering during the election period.
“Notwithstanding these explanations and the fulfilment of my commitments, Mr Greenidge has the temerity to misinform the public about the events surrounding these two matters during their consideration in the National Assembly,” he said.
