Dear Editor,
I would be most grateful for you once again to bring to the attention of your readership and in particular your columnist Mr Goolsarran, the position concerning my employment at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). I am rather distressed that even though I did offer clarification on the terms of my engagement after the Kaieteur News’s publication of its very misleading article of October 27, 2014, captioned ‘Sattaur collected full retirement package in 2012,’ that your columnist in November 10’s edition of SN in his column captioned ‘Another scandal another case of circling the wagons’ would choose to provide his own misguided views concerning my terms of employment with the state as head of the GRA.
For ease of reference I will quote verbatim what Mr Goolsarran wrote: “We also discussed the re-employment of the Commissioner General on a contractual basis the very next day that he retired after receiving a hefty retirement package. At the United Nations, when an official reaches retirement age, he/she has to demit office and make way for the next in line or a new recruit. In exceptional circumstances, a person can be rehired as a ‘consultant’ after a ‘cooling off’ period. He/she cannot, however, occupy any of the authorized positions, and there is a limitation on the number of months in a year that he can serve, otherwise his/her pension is stopped.”
It is important for persons such as Mr Goolsarran, who choose to use your newspaper to promote their views on various social issues to first familiarise themselves with the relevant provision of the law and in the case in point, the Revenue Authority Act, which authorizes my employment and circumscribes my functions in the capacity of the Head of the GRA. Under relevant provisions of the Revenue Authority Act, I am appointed by the Governing Board with the approval of the minister, and as such I am at a loss how Mr Goolsarran can make any comparison with practices of the United Nations. This is tantamount to mischief and deceitfulness on the part of Mr Goolsarran and I trust he will do the honourable thing as a fellow of the Association of Certified Accountants (FCCA) to give equal prominence to correcting his misconception of my engagement as the head of the GRA, as he chose to misinform.
Yours faithfully,
Khurshid Sattaur
Commissioner-General
Guyana Revenue Authority
