Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, who is also the Minister of Information, is not clear what action, if any, will be taken based on a long-completed probe of financial irregularities at state broadcaster NCN since he is yet to see the report.
While in opposition he had said the findings were enough to merit prosecution.
Nagamootoo, who also disclosed that NCN as well as the Guyana Chronicle are almost in a state of bankruptcy, maintained that it was former president Donald Ramotar who would have commissioned the audit and he expects that President David Granger would deal with it.
However, if the president sends the report to him, he said “it would be addressed in the appropriate way. If the report says this is a matter that should be addressed by the police, then I don’t see no reason why the police ought not to be called in.”
Asked if he would make a formal request to see the report, he said, “I would like to see the report. I am not sure if I request I would be able to see it. If it is a report that ought to be dealt with by the President then that is a presidential fiat.”
He added, “If the report gets to my desk, I would address it” and he stressed that he does not know where the report is while noting that the last time he had read about it Ramotar had indicated that the report was on his desk.
“Wherever that report leads, we would go, whichever road we would go…,” Nagamootoo said, while adding that if anyone is found culpable, then it would require the report being handed over to a judicial authority for the relevant authority to take action.
As to whether it would be a matter of priority, Nagamootoo was unsure and pointed out that the administration has only been in government for a short period and it would have had pressing matters, such as the flooding of various parts of Guyana, and the present Venezuela maritime issue, which is a matter of urgent national priority.
In 2013, speaking on the issue as a then opposition member, Nagamootoo said that there was enough evidence to merit prosecution. “The failure of the president to follow-up on his assurance has left us with nothing about which we could be confident about government being serious to deal with malfeasance,” he had said at the time.
“Though an independent audit was done and culpability identified… remedial action was put in cold storage because politicians had to be involved in a clearly administrative issue,” he added.
Former NCN Programme Manager Martin Goolsarran and NCN’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mohammed ‘Fuzzy’ Sattaur were implicated in the irregularities.
In June, 2012, the NCN Board launched an investigation into suspected financial irregularities at the network. Sattaur subsequently resigned and Goolsarran was suspended. He was initially suspended for eight weeks without pay for allegedly attempting to cover up financial irregularities by pressuring staff to prepare backdated invoices, among other things. The suspension was later extended indefinitely.
Goolsarran was first sent on administrative leave in relation to a $3.9 million cheque made payable to him by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) as an incentive for the production team that worked during the company’s jingle and song competition, held between September 2011 and February 2012.
The decision to investigate the incentive payment was taken at a meeting by NCN board members in 2012 to examine how the cutting of the $82 million government subvention to $1 by the combined opposition would affect the company.
Former President Ramotar was repeatedly asked by the media about the report during his tenure but offered a series of excuses on it.
Bankruptcy
Meanwhile, Nagamootoo on Monday disclosed that both NCN and the Guyana Chronicle are in a state of bankruptcy and that both companies’ boards need to be reconstituted.
He also said change is expected at both entities as well as at the Government Information Agency (GINA).
“I would expect changes. I would like to start with the changes first starting with professionalism, that those who are working with these entities must have a professional commitment to their job,” he said.
In the case of GINA, Nagamootoo said the agency ought to unequivocally report what the government does without editorialising or “trying to do any backgrounding of these issues, just say plainly, ‘Government officials on the streets cleaning garbage outside the Stabroek Market period….”
“I am not interested in them saying that this is the APNU+AFC government. This is the government. You don’t need to brand the government because you are trying to politicise it. So I would feel the GINA for example would not politicise what it does,” he added.
As it relates to NCN and the Chronicle, Nagamootoo said they are government-controlled entities but they have a “slightly different function.”
“Both of these entities are in the public domain, they are facing very difficult grim, financial situations. They are both in the throes of bankruptcy… and, therefore, the first thing I would like Chronicle to do, for example, is to be able to professionally create a paper that has balance, it must have objectivity and must not be a party propaganda rag as it has been,” the minister said.
Nagamootoo, a former Information Minister under the PPP/C, also said the newspaper should not “sublimely” try to inject partisan politics into its columns, “grinding an axe because I see some of that in their reporting. Even now, the Chronicle is still largely in the pasture, it is still an untamed animal insofar as professionalism is concerned.”
“It has to be tamed. I intend to do that once I am the minister but I am not going to victimise people, I am not going to witch-hunt anyone, I am going to give them the opportunity to claim the high ground of professionalism,” he noted.
He said if the employees are not given an opportunity to be professional, then the powers that be would not have a right to discipline anyone.
“I always believe in the profession. Journalism and journalists are self-regulatory. They regulate themselves, they know how to conduct themselves, they don’t need a law… you don’t need a law to tell journalists what they must do and what they must not do, they must regulate themselves,” he said.
He said he also does not expect the newspaper to “escape from the issues of the day and go into diversions,” while pointing out that the most serious national issue presently has to do with the recent Venezuelan decree on Guyana’s waters and he awaits to see when the Chronicle addresses national issues in its editorials.
“I don’t want escapism. The newspaper has to be committed and it has to be committed to the nation. In saying that, I am not in favour of censorship. I am in favour of people having the right to objective criticism, open views and so it is not shutting out the other side but you must be objective,” he added.
And he stressed that while it is “open to the other side,” it does not mean persons would be allowed to be vicious, defamatory and malicious. He said he has seen repeated letters by operatives of the former government trying to make unsubstantiated statements in the face of the official declaration of Gecom, a constitutional body, on the May 11th polls.
“I still see the Chronicle trying to introduce avenues to say the elections were rigged; that’s an editorial judgement because if you start doing that, you are questioning the pronouncements made by a constitutional body and therefore you need to have editorial judgement,” Nagamootoo stressed.
‘Total investigation’
As for NCN, the Prime Minister said the network is struggling to generate money to pay its staff and he said it now has to come up with avenues to create revenue and he suggested that programmes be created to help to capture more advertising revenue. The staff members need to be looked at and to ascertain whether they are performing the duties as they ought to, he also said.
“You couldn’t have on your staff two dozen persons who are there to write blogs and write letters and insult people and defame people’s character. You had to be able to know you cannot carry that weight, that was a baggage and that baggage must go,” he said in reference to a number of persons who were fired from the Ministry of the Presidency.
Those persons, while not stationed at the then Office of the President, were paid up to $22,000 fortnightly through NCN to blog and write letters and respond to online criticisms of the former government.
Asked if anyone would be held culpable for this issue, the Prime Minister said the appointments were political and it is those persons who should be made to be accountable and be investigated. “They should be investigated for malfeasance in office, for misuse of public money and I intend that there should be a total investigation,” he said.
He also said that the boards at NCN and the Chronicle would be reconstituted so that they could commission investigations as he does not want to be “the interfering minister.” He said the board would have to find out why the Chronicle does not have a canteen that could be inhabited by human beings.
“It is the most appalling thing that could happen at a state [agency], they are spending money on propaganda… and you have a place where I went the other day and I saw a horrible place for canteen for the staff…,” he disclosed.
When questioned about the reported $10M owed to the Chronicle by the PPP/C, the Prime Minister said that “many parties still owe the Chronicle” but what he is shocked about is that GINA owes the Chronicle $70M. He said this must be investigated, including why was the newspaper not doing anything to address the issue of advertisements being placed with no payment, which has now placed it in a state of indebtedness.
