By Jeff Trotman
Cabinet has approved a memorandum seeking $9.2 million to assist the Linden municipality to meet the minimum wage and other incidentals for the rest of the year, Junior Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker has announced.
Speaking on a panel discussion on the closure of the Kara Kara toll point in Linden aired on Saturday evening on NCN, Linden, Whittaker said the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development successfully presented to Cabinet a memorandum seeking funds for the Linden municipality on Tuesday, November 12, and it was approved on the same day. The money will be sourced from the Contingency Fund.
Whittaker said this was done cognisant of the fact that as a result of the increase in the minimum wage, salaried workers earn a minimum of $35,000 per month and weekly paid workers receive a minimum of $8,000 per week.
He also noted the Linden Interim Management Committee (IMC) did point out that it was finding it difficult to garner the kind of resources necessary to meet the minimum requirement.
Following the ministry’s revocation of the Kara Kara toll, the cash-strapped IMC said it was unable to meet its October wage bill for Town Council workers. The Local Government Ministry had said that a legal opinion had found that the order for the toll was null and void because it had not been gazetted. The revocation came after the toll order was challenged by a “stakeholder,” who protested to central government and urged a review.
During the broadcast on Saturday, Whittaker tried to assure Lindeners that the government has not abandoned the municipality, while noting that he was able to ensure that Town Council workers were paid in October. He further revealed that he had sought assistance and gotten approval from the government to ensure that the council meets its salary increases to the end of the year.
‘Shortcomings’
Linden is one of two municipalities—Georgetown is the other—that failed to submit their 2014 budgetary estimates for approval by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development last week. Whittaker said he was informed that members of the Linden IMC had not met to consider and to approve the budget. He stressed that without a budget the municipalities essentially do not have a plan on the way forward and of what will be done in the upcoming year in terms of infrastructure and the sourcing of funds. He said officials from the Local Government Ministry engaged the municipal officers and learnt that the Linden Town Council might have been angered by the fact that the order was passed rescinding the toll collection and that was their way of voicing their disagreement.
The Linden Town Council had set up the Kara Kara toll point to raise money to fix roads within the town that would have been damaged by heavy equipment that passed through the town but the revenue was used to pay salaries instead, Whittaker observed, while criticising a tendency by local government bodies to put all their eggs in one basket. He noted that while some municipalities depend primarily on fees they garner from markets, the physical conditions under which people vend in those markets leave much to be desired. “People pay fees to use a market facility and they expect that that facility will create the kind of environment that is conducive to vending in a healthy environment,” he said. “And there is a reasonable expectation that some of that revenue will be used to do that. But very often that doesn’t happen. Similarly with road tolls. Besides the fact that, as I pointed out in the order rescinding the tolls…there were shortcomings… insignificant sums were actually spent on maintaining roads. So, when you collect the money from people, who use the road, there is a reasonable expectation from those people that some part of this money would be used to fix roads. But, may I say for the viewing public, that is not so.”
Whittaker said the ministry would seek to meet councillors and workers to explain its intervention but also to point out to them the areas of dissatisfaction from both the perspectives of the government and the people. He added that government was not satisfied that enough effort was being made to rake in revenue that is due to the council. “Neither are we satisfied that enough focus is being placed on consultations with the people and on developing projects that would bring more goods and services to the people of Linden,” he said.
“We want to work together with you and with your leaders. This is not about any politicking [or] infighting. This is about working with you and your leaders if they want to work with us, or if you can make them work with us so that we can iron out the deficiencies,” he added.
‘Everybody just throw back
and depend on the toll booth’
According to Whittaker, there is concern about how money received is disbursed by the IMC. “You cannot be receiving money from rate payers and when the rate payer has a reasonable expectation that a significant amount of that money will be used to provide services that would bring some redress for them, like fixing the roads, for example … (and) bridges where they need to be fixed and so on (but) when a significant amount of that money is spent in paying salaries and wages and people do not see the services that they wish … when they complain, they blame the government,” he pointed out, while calling on the people of Linden to be more proactive and vigilant in monitoring the operations of the municipality. “You need to monitor what’s going on. You cannot allow your eyes or your vision to be clouded by the sweet talks that you get from some leaders in your community. You need to be proactive and go out there to see and examine for yourself.”
The three-member television panel also comprised two PPP/C representatives, Eon Halls, a member of the Linden IMC and Compton Fraser, a Regional Democratic Councillor of Region Ten, who pointed out that complaints against the toll had been made in Linden.
“We have persons from inside the region who have been plying their trucks outside Linden and have been complaining that they have to pay that sum of money and it’s a bit rough. They complained to the government, who decided to remove the toll but the council said it was a problem,” Fraser said.
Fraser also said the council will have to get its act together by stepping up on its collection of rates and taxes as well as market rental and not relying totally on the toll booth.
Halls echoed Fraser’s sentiments, while saying that the council is owed $105 million in rates and taxes, excluding interest, by the people of the community, in addition to $11 million by market vendors.
Halls also said that the Linden IMC has encountered problems in being compliant with the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). “We deduct monies from the people’s salaries but we don’t pay the NIS,” he said, while adding that at this point in time the NIS could seize all the assets of the Town Council. Halls also claimed that the Linden IMC deducts money from its workers to pay into GRA but since before 1992 it has not turned those deductions over to the GRA. Additionally, he claimed that the Linden IMC owes over $40M to the town’s two electricity providers.
“We are collecting rates and taxes but still we are not paying these entities,” the Linden IMC PPP/C councillor bemoaned as he added that all the money that was collected from the Kara Kara toll point and other revenue areas was used to pay the workers’ salaries. “…Everybody just throw back and depend on the toll booth,” he said, while pointing to the need for some new revenue sources, including fines for littering.
