The PPP/C gov’t has provided significant support to the citizens of Georgetown

Dear Editor, Government has noted in the Friday, June 9th edition of daily newspapers, a letter with the headline “The PPP Government owes City Hall more than $1 Billion in rates and taxes and the Administration is not paying” by Mayor Ubraj Narine in which he attempts to mislead the people of Guyana through deliberate misrepresentation of facts pertaining to the management and accountability of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC). Ubraj Narine’s letter on June 9, 2023, attempts to distort and discredit the facts stated in the Guyana Chronicle article of June 8 titled “An accountable City Hall stands to gain massive support from central gov’t – Jagdeo”.

In his letter of June 9, he poorly attempted to cloud the facts surrounding audits of the finances of City Hall by claiming “I have written to the Auditor General requesting an audit of the accounts of the Municipality… I have never received a response to my repeated request”.

Given that the Auditor General would have informed the Town Clerk (ag.) of the status of the Audits, the 2021 Auditor General’s (AG) report on page 95 states that the last audited Financial Statements for the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown was in 2004. The Auditor General also highlighted that he has not received financial statements for a number of years including 2020 and 2021. In addition, the Special Audit Report of the Auditor General for the years 2019 and 2020, sent on 28 April 2022 to Ms. Candace Nelson -Town Clerk (a.g.), states “Financial statements were submitted for the year 2018 and 2019. However, they were subsequently returned to M&CC on 27 August 2021 for non-compliance with International Accounting Standards.” It must be noted that these periods directly relate to Ubraj Narine’s tenure as Mayor. How can one reasonably expect the Auditor General to perform his duties, if the M&CC fails to supply the information necessary to carry out the Audit?

In his letter to the Press, the Mayor made the outlandish claim that Central Government has provided paltry sums of money to maintain the capital city. This is farthest from the truth. In fact, the PPP/C government has provided significant support to the citizens of Georgetown, some of which include:

● During the period 2020 to 2022, the Government expended over $6 billion to construct and rehabilitate roads in Georgetown;

● Between 2020 and 2022, the Government expended $155 million to reconstruct and rehabilitate bridges;

● During the period 2020- 2022, the Government expended $1 billion to enhance the Old Railway Embankment, $1.6 billion on enhancement works along Independence Boulevard, Cemetery Road, and Internal Roads, Albouystown, Georgetown; and $250 million on enhancement works along Kingston Seawall;

● Between 2021 and 2022, expended $678 million to operate and maintain the main drainage system in the municipality;

● Between 2021 and 2022, the Government expended $600

Dear Editor,

The persistence of race as the predominant factor in the Guyanese political process, and the role which the country’s political leadership in the PPP/C is playing in healing the ethnic divide, is bearing bountiful fruit, despite coalition miscreants’ attempts to exacerbate disunity in the nation.

If one reads our history, and if one is aufait with the history of the colonisers, one would recognise that the predominant factor driving the power of the colonial elitists in every country they have occupied is a ‘divide and rule’ policy. Whether they create ethnic cleavages, exacerbate religious intolerance, or cause political divides, it was their strategy to conquer and rule countries that they occupied, primarily for the extraction and appropriation of the wealth of occupied territories. Today Haiti is still under siege by its former colonizers.

Guyana fell prey to this vicious strategy because the viability of the sugar estates under British rule was threatened subsequent to emancipation, when freed African slaves refused to be subservient to the ‘massa’ any-