City Hall workers may engage in industrial action over a directive issued by acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba to City Hall spokesman Royston King, instructing him to go on leave to allow for a re-examination of his department.
The Guyana Local Government Officers Union (GLGOU) has since intervened in the issue and its President Dale Beresford yesterday said that unless Sooba rescinds the order and follow the correct procedure, then the body will call for industrial action to be taken.
King received the notice on Thursday which indicated that he must proceed on leave as of August 27 for a period of three weeks. Efforts to reach Sooba for comment yesterday were unsuccessful.
“First of all, Mr. King needs to apply for leave through the personnel section and he is due for leave from October and at this point we don’t believe that officers should go on leave. They should be on board to deal with the issues,” Beresford told Stabroek News.
Beresford further reiterated that Sooba does not have the authority to instruct officers on leave and that such an order must go through several processes.
“It has to go through the standing committee, the social development and also the personnel committee. Additionally, we are saying that Mr. King should not be sent on leave at this junction. We are asking them who will undertake the duties of the [Public Relations Officer]? She has said the registrar supervisor, Valerie Chichester, who has no experience in public relations. Additionally, Mr. King’s department has a deputy, Debra Lewis, who has been functioning in his absence over and over to satisfaction. Again, this has been bypassed,” Beresford said.
King, meanwhile, suggested that he was being targeted. “She is now targeting public relations for obvious reasons and one of those reasons is because I was recommended by the council on two occasions to head the organisation as Town Clerk,” King told Stabroek News yesterday.
King was appointed to act as Town Clerk by the council—but without the approval of the Local Government Ministry—when it had identified replacements to act in the stead of six officers sent on leave to facilitate the police investigation into the city’s operations. However, just days later, the Local Government Ministry took a decision to have Sooba act in the position instead. This move was also criticised by the GLGOU.
Sooba does not have the authority to ask any officer of the municipality to proceed on leave, King said, while also questioning her competence to re-examine his department, since it is a specialist section.
Beresford also questioned the stakeholders who Sooba intended to involve in her re-examining process and noted that the unions need to be a part of the exercise. “You are saying that after 21 days you will complete reengineering of the section? Where is all the information for that coming from? King is the most applicable person,” he said.
Beresford also noted that currently committees are requesting that officers work beyond their normal working hours and this is a “countermove that is ill-conceived and it is counterproductive.”
