Former Commissioner Ronald Gajraj and minister of foreign affairs Carolyn Rodrigues will be held accountable for financial and administrative discrepancies found at Guyana’s High Commission in India, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge said.
He was responding to a question about who would be answerable for discrepancies at the high commission to which he had referred, and told Stabroek News “The responsible officer, namely the Ambassador and the Minister at the time.”
The Guyana High Commission in India has for several years been under the sole purview of the High Commissioner Ronald Gajraj. Following the change in government he tendered his resignation and returned home.
Gajraj was assigned to the post after serving as Minister of Home Affairs from January 1999 to May 2005. In 2005, he was forced to resign from that post after local and international pressure was applied to the Bharrat Jagdeo administration following allegations linking the minister to the activities of a death squad.
Since his appointment as High Commissioner to India, the diplomat has been serving under a series of contracts, the terms of which he has personally drafted, a source at the ministry revealed to Stabroek News. These contracts were then forwarded to the Office of the President and signed by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon.
The Foreign Affairs Minister said an investigation revealed that “Moneys were often not spent in keeping with established financial rules and regulations and the Ambassador operated without an account and an Accounting Officer.”
The ministry had dispatched an accountant and Foreign Service Officer shortly after the David Granger administration won the May 11 general elections, to examine the operations of the ministry since there was no accountant on site during Gajraj’s tenure.
Government has since put measures in place so as not to not have a repeat of the maladministration Greenidge said: “An officer has been sent to re-establish the proper financial procedures and practices and to ensure that there will be no repetition of the event. An accountant has now been appointed to the mission.”
Greenidge said that during the course of the next four weeks government will be appointing either ambassadors or high commissioners to the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, India and China.
While Greenidge remained tight lipped on who would be taking up the post of Ambassador to Venezuela, he indicated that the Venezuelan government has already been asked for agrement for the ambassador designate. In the interim an officer is currently in charge at the embassy.
Further, he stated that all consuls general will be moved in keeping with the announced policy of the government. However at least one post of honorary consul is set to be upgraded. The names of persons identified for these positions will also be announced during the next four weeks.
