With its books now audited and brought up to date, the Guyana Public Service Cooperative Credit Union’s next Annual General Meeting (AGM) should be held by March 2021, Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton announced yesterday.
Speaking at a press conference in the boardroom of his ministry, Hamilton explained that the Interim Management Committee (IMC) has been able straighten the affairs of the credit union, paving the way for it’s over 22,000 members to elect a board of directors.
The minister pointed out that the 2019 accounts have been audited and the findings were shared with the management body and circulated to members. On this note, he said that with the credit union’s affairs in order, the AGM would be held.
However, Hamilton disclosed that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ministry has granted a four-month extension of the life of the IMC, since it is currently unable to host an AGM. The four-month extension runs from December 01, 2020, to March 31, 2021.
“The administration of the department wishes to advise all members of the credit union to be involved in the process to elect a committee of management and a supervisory committee that will manage the society in the interest of all the members and according to the laws and by laws of the society,” Hamilton urged.
Aware of the fact that the AGM can be interrupted, Hamilton assured that all measures will be put in place to ensure there is a transparent electoral process for voting and appointment of the board. He noted too that when the AGM is held, if anyone interrupts the process they will be prosecuted.
In 2019, head of the IMC, Trevor Benn, had told Stabroek News that much development has taken place since the interim body was installed.
“I would say that we have taken the Credit Union to a new level and that is what is affecting the old management team,” he said of the recent claims. “We inherited a system where there was a committee called the Modernisation Commit-tee where members of the Management Committee were also members and collecting stipends as both, yet we have not seen what became modern under them,” Benn was quoted as saying.
The credit union’s last AGM was held in 2010. An IMC was installed in May 2018 to fix and straighten out the issues that dogged the credit union.
Benn had said “We are trying to bring all of the audits up to date and we are trying to make sure that the union’s staff are able to take on the work of the credit union in a sustainable way before we go forward. I don’t see that happening maybe ’til another few months and then we should have an AGM.”
“They had an audit which was completed for 2011, which they refused to sign off on because they didn’t want to pay the money. We signed off on it after we went through it and we were satisfied with the findings. And then up to 2014 and after that the money was calculated that we owed and we actually negotiated and paid a reduction,” Benn had explained.
Prior to the installation of the IMC, the credit union’s management had accused then Junior Social Protection Minister Keith Scott of “financial bullyism” after he requested that the union pay over $49 million in retroactive contributions to an Audit and Supervision Fund for the years 2002 to 2013. The credit union held that it had been granted a waiver by former Minister of Labour Nanda Gopaul and had said that Scott was obstructing the release of the 2011 to 2013 audit reports, therefore, blocking the holding of its AGM, and as a result, the payment of dividends to members. It was also stated that the ministry refused to audit the 2014 to 2016 records.
