Although the new government has signalled its intent to disband the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA), it is concerned that the shuttering of the body would see some 40 members of staff out of a job.
Nandlall told a press conference on Saturday that while the government has no difficulty in terminating the contracts of the senior staff, whom he described as the “political fat cats”, the junior ones are another matter.
“There are about 40 staff in SARA and if you shut the agency down you are putting persons out of work and that’s our concern right now… Our concerns remain the number of persons— not the political fat cats there because there are a few of them there working over a million and more dollars each per month, those are not our concerns, our concerns are the lower staff,” Nandlall told a virtual press conference.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo recently announced that the PPP/C government will disband SARA and would be guided by Nandlall on how it goes about the process.
“Right now the unit has to be disbanded. The Attorney General will have to guide us in this regard to see what efforts we make whether we have an agency or we call in the police directly or we have the audits done,” Jagdeo said, while responding to a question on the future of SARA.
Jagdeo said that millions of dollars have been spent on an agency that has not produced any results.
“We have to be advised but right now the people who are there have not done anything and are incapable of doing anything. Many of them of are political…,” he said. “We don’t want an agency that uses hundreds of millions of dollars per year to recover $10. We don’t want that, we can’t afford that at the moment as a country.”
The establishment of SARA had been criticized by the PPP/C while in opposition as it claimed that it had been illegally set up.
SARA, headed by Professor Clive Thomas, initiated a series of legal cases, including against Jagdeo and other persons who purchased land at ‘Pradoville 2’ below market prices, as part of efforts to recover “stolen” state assets under its mandate.
