Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray says every cent spent in her city will be ac­count­ed for and there will no longer be any abuse of pub­lic funds, which oc­curred un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. Speak­ing at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing held at City Hall on Tues­day, Coudray de­fend­ed her first char­i­ty event say­ing over $.3 mil­lion was raised and not a cent of State funds was used to host the event. She not­ed that chil­dren from Hope Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do, as well as the Prime Min­is­ter's Life Fund would ben­e­fit from the suc­cess­ful fund-rais­er which took place on No­vem­ber 20. "I am one who will al­ways ac­count for pub­lic funds and I want to say that no State mon­ey was used in this fund rais­ing project," she re­it­er­at­ed.

Coudray ex­plained that tick­et sales for the boat cruise on the Paria Bul­let amount­ed to $306,900, while the city re­ceived $35,625 in do­na­tions. A fur­ther $225.00 was raised in pic­ture sales with the may­or, while a box of cig­ars do­nat­ed by the Cuban Am­bas­sador Hum­ber­to Rivero Rosario was auc­tioned for $3,000. She al­so ex­plained that a Dutch auc­tion which car­ried a prize of a week­end for two at Tradewinds Ho­tel raised $2,500, which brought the to­tal fund-rais­ing dri­ve to $5,725. Coudray said al­though there was a call in some quar­ters to use the monies to pay south­ern pan­men, this would not be done.

"I want to state em­phat­i­cal­ly that all of the monies raised will go to var­i­ous char­i­ties," Coudray said. She al­so stat­ed that every­one who went on the cruise paid $750 to $800 to at­tend.

"This ven­ture was a self fi­nanc­ing one and I want the pub­lic to know that no state funds were used for this," Coudray said. She added that there were cer­tain rules which gov­erned pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture and they would be fol­lowed un­der her watch. Coudray al­so took a stab at a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter over al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion where­by monies were al­lo­cat­ed for the San Fer­nan­do Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which Coudray said did not ex­ist. She al­so not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion was forced to dip in­to its cof­fers and pay $7 mil­lion in out­stand­ing bills be­cause of the mis­man­age­ment and abuse of pub­lic funds which oc­curred un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.