Dear Editor,
I am penning this letter to highlight the problems we are encountering with our RDC statutory meetings in Region Eight.
First of all, because of the cost for transporting councillors to RDC meetings, we only have meetings quarterly, that is four times per year; however, that is not the problem. The problem is that most of these meetings bear little fruit if any, because of the behaviour of the Clerk of the Council who I believe was specially sent into this region with an agenda to stymie development here.
In our first RDC meeting of the year the Clerk and all the programme managers were absent from the meeting. We received two excuses, one from the Clerk of the Council and another one from a programme manager for being absent.
In my opinion they were lame excuses. The persons they sent to represent them as programme managers could not give answers to most of the questions asked by the toshaos and regional councillors.
In our second RDC meeting of the year the Clerk of the Council was absent for part of the morning session and the entire afternoon session of the first day.
He appointed an assistant accountant to act in his place. The next day of the RDC meeting the Assistant Regional Executive Officer (AREO) deputized in his absence for only the morning session. The assistant accountant acted in his place for the afternoon session.
He was present for the entire third RDC meeting.
Our last one for the year was to be held on December 9 and 10, but after I did not receive any notice I enquired from our Regional Chairman why I had not received notice as yet. He informed me that he had been told by the Clerk of the Council that insufficient monies had been allocated under line item 6211 to conduct a full sitting of the RDC.
I found it to be rather strange that all the money had finished, and I cannot accept it. I do recall when the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development had a meeting in May of this year with the REO the programme managers and the councillors, our Regional Chairman requested to have all bills prior to submission for payment from line item 6211 to be first sent to the Regional Chairman for a no-objection, and the Minister instructed the REO to do same. Our Regional Chairman even wrote the REO a letter dated June 4, 2013, requesting same.
Recently when I enquired from our Regional Chairman as to whether the REO is sending bills prior to submission for payment for a no-objection, he told me only about four bills were sent to him for a no-objection.
Editor I find this rather unfair to the councillors, for someone to be spending monies that are allocated in the budget to run the council, and refusing to go to council for a no-objection before payment is made. Imagine we are owed 2 months stipend for last year and 2 months for this year and still the money is finished.
I am calling for a full investigation of the spending of line item 6211. I would like our members of parliament to look into this matter and call for a full investigation into how the monies were spent.
It is totally unacceptable for us, moreso the residents of Region Eight, not having properly constituted RDC statutory meetings since many of the issues affecting the residents cannot be addressed at the council level all because of the Clerk of the Council.
These are some of the reasons why we were forced to move a motion of no-confidence against him, and our position remains the same ‒ we don’t have any confidence in him.
And yet Clerk of the Council continues to enjoy the full confidence and support of the Ministry of Local Government & Regional Development which is obvious to us in the RDC, so that it is obvious the REO can only be carrying out the wishes of central government.
Yours faithfully,
Oswald Junor
Regional Democratic
Councillor
Region Eight
