After three weeks of deliberations, the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the operations of City Hall is set to submit its report to the Local Government Commission (LGC) today.
Retired judge Cecil Kennard who is the lone commissioner explained to Stabroek News that he was up to yesterday still preparing the report but was set to submit same by 3 pm today, the deadline given by the commission.
“At this stage we are not asking for more time. We are reviewing the draft and preparing to submit,” he said.
While Kennard would not divulge any of the conclusions reached by the CoI, Stabroek News understands that at least one matter, the ownership of the Sussex Street Wharf, has been settled.
Kennard indicated that the CoI “found it necessary to physically identify the portion of land” under dispute and therefore visited Lot 1 Mudlot, Lombard Street, Georgetown.
Stabroek News understand that documents submitted to the CoI prove that the land does not belong to City Hall.
Town Clerk Royston King had been accused of leasing land belonging to the government holding company, the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), to a shipping company
Arianne McLean, in-house attorney for NICIL, testified that GNEC acquired the property in 1985 after purchasing it from the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC). Subsequent to this acquisition, NICIL acquired the property when GNEC was dissolved, and all of its assets and liabilities were handed over to NICIL via a vesting order, dated May 30th, 2002. The vesting order, McLean maintained, listed the property as the first asset on the vesting order. NICIL produced as evidence Land Transport #525 of 1985 which shows that Lot 1-8 belongs to Guyana National Engineering Corporation Limited (GNEC) and consequently NICIL.
The leasing document signed between City Hall and Quick Shipping identifies Lot 1-3 as being subject to the lease while the transport presented by King identifies Lot 18 as belonging to council.
King and his lawyer Maxwell Edwards had argued that though they have personally searched and caused the staff of Parliament Office to search for the order vesting ownership of the piece of land at Lombard and Sussex streets in the GMC they could find none.
As a result, King submitted to the CoI that it has been concluded that “the reasonable and irresistible inference is that no notice was published and accordingly that property never vested in or passed to GMC which therefore was incapable of passing transporting to anyone.”
King further provided the commission with copies of a transport, No. 2803 of 1966, which shows that the then Mayor and Town Council of Georgetown had full and absolute title to the riparian lands abutting and contiguous to the foreshore at Mudflat 1 Lombard Street.
Additionally, King provided a copy of a lease, dated 1958, between the then Mayor and Town Council of Georgetown and the Colony of British Guiana, which granted the colony use of the land for the purpose of carrying on a Fish Centre for 10 years at a rental of 24 cents per annum.
He also noted that in 1995, a lease agreement was signed between M&CC and the Georgetown and International Fishing Investment Company Limited. A copy of this lease, filed as No. 132/99 with the Deeds Registry, was also provided to the commission.
