With the three opposition-nominated members of the Local Government Commission (LGC) accusing the government of deliberately starving the body of funds and delaying its work, Chairman Mortimer Mingo has clarified that a portion of its $110 million budget for 2018 was only recently deposited into its bank account.
Commissioners Norman Whittaker, Clinton Collymore and Carol Sooba on Friday spoke about the challenges still facing the LGC in the five months since its establishment, while complaining that Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan is still performing functions that are within its remit.
“These people are not treating this commission with any seriousness. They have even withheld finance from the commission and to date the monies which had been voted for the commission for 2018, we haven’t seen a cent of it. We don’t even know if the money has been transferred into the accounts of the commission at the Bank of Guyana,” Collymore told reporters at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.