Sascha Wil­son

There are no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties or con­flict in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship-con­trolled San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.

The de­nial came from chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, De­o­dath Ra­goo­bar, and San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray yes­ter­day at the cor­po­ra­tion's statu­to­ry meet­ing, even as two lone PNM coun­cil­lors and two PP al­der­men blanked the meet­ing. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Rudy In­dars­ingh, who ear­li­er had held a cau­cus meet­ing with PP coun­cil­lors al­so sat in at the statu­to­ry meet­ing along with per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Steven Crease and Kem­chan Ram­dath, ad­vis­er to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma.

The cor­po­ra­tion has been en­veloped in con­tro­ver­sy since deputy May­or Dr Navi Mu­radali queried how and why cor­po­ra­tion funds were used to pay $54,000 in MBA fees for Coudray in her then ca­pac­i­ty as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer. Seek­ing to clear the air Ra­goo­bar said: "There is no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in this cor­po­ra­tion. Every­thing is done in ac­cor­dance with the reg­u­la­tions." He ex­plained that at the SFCC there is a train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy where they as­sist em­ploy­ees with train­ing and de­vel­op­ment. Ra­goo­bar added that be­fore any cheque was pre­pared by the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee it had to be pre­sent­ed to the coun­cil for ap­proval. The grant that was giv­en to Cour­day went through the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dure for ap­proval be­fore the fees were paid, he said.

He added: "There are no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. All doc­u­ments are avail­able for scruti­ny."

Cour­day said: "I al­so want to put on record that the sys­tem in lo­cal gov­ern­ment is a most de­mo­c­ra­t­ic one.

"Nei­ther the may­or nor any mem­ber of the cor­po­ra­tion or oth­er sin­gle in­di­vid­u­als has the pow­er to uni­lat­er­al­ly de­cide on any is­sue in this coun­cil. "Mat­ters are dis­cussed at meet­ings and de­ci­sions are made based on a ma­jor­i­ty vote. "These de­ci­sions are then im­ple­ment­ed by the ad­min­is­tra­tive arm of the cor­po­ra­tion. "I put on record that we do not have any is­sues or any dis­pute in the coun­cil or the cor­po­ra­tion," Both Mu­radali and al­der­man Ken­ny Phillips, who had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion which was not ac­cept­ed by Shar­ma, were ab­sent.

PNM coun­cil­lors, Robert Par­ris and Sha­ka Joseph, who were ex­clud­ed from a PP meet­ing with In­dars­ingh in the may­or's of­fice, walked out about 30 min­utes af­ter the sched­uled time of the statu­to­ry meet­ing.

The oth­er coun­cil­lors, with the ex­cep­tion of Coun­cil­lor John Chankars­ingh, dis­tanced them­selves from the al­le­ga­tions and ex­pressed their sup­port for the may­or and the ad­min­is­tra­tive arm. Point­ing out that his vis­it had noth­ing to do with any al­leged con­flict, he said it was part of a plan to im­prove the ser­vice and de­liv­ery at lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el. He said they al­so would be sit­ting in at sim­i­lar meet­ing at the oth­er cor­po­ra­tions.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards Coudray said she was not aware that Phillips had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion. She al­so was clue­less as to why the PNM coun­cil­lors left be­fore the start of the meet­ing. Short­ly be­fore the statu­to­ry meet­ing, a pri­vate meet­ing was held with the min­is­ter and mem­bers of the coun­cil. The two PNM coun­cil­lors said they were in­vit­ed to that meet­ing but when they ar­rived were told they were not al­lowed in be­cause it was a PP meet­ing.