Town Clerk rejects mismanagement accusations

Royston King
Royston King

Town Clerk Royston King yesterday rejected accusations that he has mismanaged the finances of the municipality, while claiming that the council’s meagre revenue base makes it impossible.

“To begin with, the City Council’s finances [are] managed by the City Treasurer. I don’t manage the council finances. And the second thing is that we don’t have that money to mismanage. How we are going to mismanage if we don’t have it, the money?” King said in an interview with HGPTV’s Travis Chase that was broadcast live on Facebook yesterday morning.

King, who had been maintaining his silence since the start of ongoing Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the management and administration of City Hall, used the interview to address allegations raised so far at public hearings.

King also appeared yesterday on Stan Gouveia’s Midday Mix on 94.1 FM, where he touched on similar issues.

He is currently on administrative leave, pending the report of the CoI, which is being led by Justice (Ret’d) Cecil Kennard.

Addressing what he said seems to be the perceived mismanagement of funds, King explained that the city council has had to prioritise works within the city to fit its revenue base. “And, I supposed, people having their own agenda and having their own priorities and having their own ideas and perhaps, looking at the way we prioritise, they are perhaps referring to that as mismanagement,” he asserted.

He further pointed out that he believes that the council is completely under resourced, resulting in a strain on the amount of revenue collected.

“When you talk about mismanagement, you have to look for a number of indicators and I don’t believe we have mismanaged. I believe we are completely under resourced and that we need the resources to get the work done at City Hall because we have been prioritising works…,” he added.

He emphasised that since 1994, it had been pointed out that the city’s revenue base was too small for the “plethora of services the council was called to provide.”

From then to now, King added, no new revenue generating project was successfully undertaken to improve the city’s coffers but the council continued to do works in communities.

Change

He went on to point out the transformation of the city from under the previous PPP/C central government to its state under the current APNU+AFC coalition government. “Fact of the matter is we are now living in a cleaner, healthier city of a higher quality and standard than the one before I took office,” King said.

He noted that in the past flooding was likely to occur after brief rainfall and streets corner were filled loads of garbage.

“Citizens would have recalled the buzz of files, mosquitoes and rodents and a whole lot of other vermin in various parts of the city. Citizens will recall the condition of the city, the condition of the drains and the condition of the parapets…Generally, they will recall that they were living in a city that none of us could have been proud of. Today all of that has changed because we tried to make a difference at the level of the Mayor and City Council,” King boasted.

Nonetheless, the Town Clerk added that there are challenges in providing services to the citizenry and paying staff.

“The challenge we have is to use your very limited resources to spread across the communities in the city and at the same time satisfy your legal financial obligations to your contractors and workers,” King explained, while adding that this is why the staff was receiving its payments late for months. “There was a delay in payment of pension and gratuity. This is so because we had to decide how we are going to give back to citizens of the city. We couldn’t take all of that money and take care of your workers,” he noted.

Touching on services that are placed on the priority list, King cited garbage disposal and pointed out that their monthly expenditure is more than their income. This dilemma, he indicated, makes the council inefficient in providing its services.

“If our monthly average intake is $80 million and your salaries and wage bill is $120 million alone, and you add to that garbage collection is $35 to $37 million and you go on to talk about your statutory obligations like GPL and GTT, right away you get to see where we are at with our finances and you will always have challenges unless you improve your revenue base,” he explained.

Internal auditing team

In addition, King said an internal auditing team was put in place when he took office to promote transparency.

He added that the auditor has been doing her work but there has been a need for additional information in order for her to complete her work.

Further he said that, it was unfortunate that they were unable to have their books audited in the past two years.

Complementing the internal auditing department are auditors from the Auditor General’s Office, who were also carrying out audits.

He stressed that while some information was not fully provided, it is available but needs to be properly organised.

“The problem, I believe, is that the financial information is available but it needs to be organised and presented in a format that will allow the auditors to study it and to make their recommendations concerning our compliance systems and whether or not we have to improve various systems as it relates to how we manage our finances,” King added.

According to the Terms of Reference for the CoI, Kennard is mandated to “Investigate the administration and operations of the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown; [investigate] the reason for and the process by which a motion of no confidence on the Town Clerk was dealt with by the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown; and generally to investigate any matter that may be brought to the attention of the Commissioner during the Inquiry that would adversely affect the administration and operation of the Municipality of Georgetown.”