Yesterday at an extraordinary meeting of the Mayor and City Council of Georgetown, a motion of no confidence in acting Town Clerk, Carol Ryan Sooba, was adopted by the council which recommended her immediate removal.
Seventeen councillors voted in favour of the motion, while four voted against and one councillor abstained.
Sooba has clashed frequently with the mayor and councillors and has frequently rejected allegations made against her.
A release from the M&CC said that the Mayor, who chaired the meeting, allowed councillors full time to deliberate and debate the motion.
The motion noted that the December 2012 Council Statutory Meeting had debated a previous motion to express a lack of confidence in Sooba. This information had been forwarded to Minister in the Ministry of Local Government Norman Whittaker with a request that he should take account of
the expressed views of the council.
According to the motion, since then the general demeanour and behaviour of the acting Town Clerk has been reprehensible.
It said that this situation climaxed when in response to a motion passed in Parliament for the Restoration of Georgetown, the Mayor had requested the acting Town Clerk to convene a meeting of all staff to sensitise them to the role the Municipality and both Unions were expected to play in the Restoration of Georgetown, the Town Clerk had refused to summon the meeting and sent a rude, irrelevant reply. This had caused the Mayor to request the Minister to have Sooba removed immediately.
The motion continued that at a meeting summoned on April 15, 2013 by the Minister at which the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Town Clerk (ag) were present, the Minister had determined that the response by the Town Clerk (ag) was offensive. The Minister had suggested to the Town Clerk (ag) that it should be withdrawn and an apology proffered to the Mayor.
Although at the said meeting, the Town Clerk had said that she would consider the Minister’s suggestion, she had neither sought to withdraw her memo nor offered an apology.
The motion said that since that time the Town Clerk has continued to ignore the decisions of council under the pretext that they are administrative matters and in the most recent cases that decisions of council are ultra virus.
It also said that the Town Clerk had been deceptive in dealing with matters related to GPL and that she had failed to supply basic needs to the Mayor’s office and, had also failed to report in a timely manner on the situation of the valuation of properties in Georgetown.
It said that during a statutory meeting, the Town Clerk had justified the strangulation of the Mayoral Complex by alleging abuse by the Mayor and his office. When at the subsequent meeting the council had proposed that the Town Clerk set out the details of the abuse in writing, she failed to produce this requested document.
The motion continued that the council abhors her deceit when she claimed that it was the Minister’s instruction that the representative on the interviewing panel for the vacancies for the position of senior officers should be identified from among members of the administration and not a councillor.
It was resolved that the council had no confidence in Sooba to perform the duties as related to Town Clerk in Chapter 28:01, or any other responsible position in the Georgetown Mayor and City Council, and that the council recommended her immediate removal.
The release said that an amendment to the last resolved clause of the motion, proposed by Councillor Gladstone George was accepted, that the Personnel and Training Committee be responsible for working out the modalities of the inquest into the behaviour of Sooba.
The Mayor said that, the motion along with other appropriate documents and papers would be dispatched to the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development and other relevant authorities and bodies within the next 48 hours. This was in keeping with sections 117, 118 and 119, under the Municipal and District Councils Act, Chapter 28:01, it concluded.
