Ken Ali

Ch­agua­nas May­or Natasha Navas, the self-con­fessed "Bar­bie" of lo­cal pol­i­tics, is now em­broiled in a bit­ter dis­pute with her Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer William Mark.

Navas is al­so the butt of sneer­ing crit­i­cism from her pre­de­ces­sor Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan. Navas has writ­ten a tough let­ter to the long-serv­ing Mark, ex­press­ing her "loss of con­fi­dence in your good of­fice." The May­or, who com­pletes her first 100 days in of­fice Sat­ur­day, charged that cer­tain heads of de­part­ment who fell un­der Mark's "di­rect stew­ard­ship" have "failed to act up­on di­rec­tions passed in the cor­po­ra­tion." She fur­ther stressed the of­fi­cials "have failed to pro­vide sta­tus re­ports or ex­pla­na­tions to the cor­po­ra­tion or to the may­or in writ­ing." Navas de­tailed the charges in a three-page let­ter to Mark, in which she di­rect­ed him to "ad­dress them with your sub­or­di­nates with the great­est ur­gency." The con­tentious is­sues in­clude garbage dis­pos­al, flood­ing, fi­nance and the work eth­ic of em­ploy­ees.

The hard­line ap­proach from the may­or has reached the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, where a top-lev­el meet­ing, in­volv­ing key stake­hold­ers, was held. This is one of sev­er­al ma­jor is­sues in which the may­or has be­come en­tan­gled in the ten­ta­tive first days of her ad­min­is­tra­tion. In an in­ter­view, Navas stat­ed, how­ev­er, that she was on­ly do­ing her du­ty to t he cor­po­ra­tion and burgess­es. "The CEO is there to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy of the cor­po­ra­tion," she said, "and he is ex­pect­ed to do that." But she down­played re­ports of a tiff, say­ing that "we have a pro­fes­sion­al work­ing re­la­tion­ship." About the ac­cused work­ers, she said: "There must be dis­ci­pline and pro­duc­tion." Ram­bachan, how­ev­er, charged that cer­tain em­ploy­ees were be­ing "at­tacked and writ­ten up to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary. Navas said her ma­jor suc­cess was "cre­at­ing a bond" be­tween the three po­lit­i­cal fac­tions in the cor­po­ra­tion. "We are work­ing to­geth­er for the bet­ter­ment of the peo­ple we serve," she in­sist­ed.

But this de­c­la­ra­tion flies in the face of re­ports of deep di­vi­sions among po­lit­i­cal pro­tag­o­nists in the cor­po­ra­tion and UNC Coun­cil­lor Gopaul Boodan's crit­i­cism last week that Ch­agua­nas "is a pig sty." Boodan slammed the cor­po­ra­tion was neg­li­gent in garbage col­lec­tion. Navas said when she took up her post, there were prob­lems with garbage con­trac­tors and the fi­nanc­ing of that func­tion. She said that took some­time to sort out. Now, she said, she had a work­ing sys­tem and em­pha­sis was be­ing placed on cer­tain dis­tricts, in­clud­ing Fe­lic­i­ty. But, Ram­bachan said there are "mounds of garbage" across the bor­ough and that "for the first time in six years, there was no clean-up for Di­vali." Asked about a ma­jor flood in mid-Sep­tem­ber, Navas charged that "there was no drainage plan when I took of­fice." But now, she added, she was work­ing on "a long-term so­lu­tion to flood­ing." Ram­bachan stat­ed, how­ev­er, he had un­der­tak­en a pre­ven­ta­tive clean­ing cam­paign, which in­clud­ed de-silt­ing fall-out drains and Hon­da Riv­er.

The may­or de­nied re­ports of vic­tim­i­sa­tion of cer­tain em­ploy­ees and ac­com­pa­ny­ing low work­er morale.?But Ram­bachan re­tort­ed with a query about the sta­tus of fe­male clean­ers who were dis­placed ear­ly in Navas' tenure. Quizzed about re­ports of 16 cor­po­ra­tion com­mit­tees, the may­or said she had sim­ply re­ac­ti­vat­ed what pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed. "On­ly one new com­mit­tee–City Sta­tus–was added, and that would look at tak­ing Ch­agua­nas in­to a city in the next two or three years," she said. But Ram­bachan said that there were, in­deed, 19 new com­mit­tees, while there were on­ly sev­en un­der his watch. The chair­man of each com­mit­tee is paid $700 a month, and some coun­cil­lors chair sev­er­al com­mit­tees, ac­cord­ing to the for­mer may­or.