SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) Bet­ty Ann Di­al is the sub­ject of a probe by the le­gal de­part­ment of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of mis­man­age­ment, breach­es and im­prop­er prac­tices levied against her by three of the cor­po­ra­tion’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lors.

The al­le­ga­tions stem from a March 23, 2021, let­ter writ­ten by coun­cil­lors Anil Ma­haraj, Ken­wyn Phillip and Nas­sar Ho­sein to Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein who ac­cused Di­al of not fol­low­ing prop­er pro­ce­dures ac­cord­ing to the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act, mak­ing uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sions in­volv­ing tax­pay­ers mon­ey and op­er­at­ing as a one-woman show.

The let­ter has trig­gered ten­sion and dishar­mo­ny in the UNC con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion.

Coun­cil­lors Ho­sein, Ma­haraj and Phillip wrote the 12-page let­ter in their ca­pac­i­ty as chair­men of com­mit­tees, call­ing on Ho­sein (Kaz­im) to “in­ter­vene, in­ves­ti­gate and as a mat­ter of ur­gency ad­dress the grave in­fringe­ments of what ap­pear to be im­prop­er prac­tices by the CEO of the SGRC.”

Phillip chairs Pub­lic Health while Ho­sein (Nas­sar) is in charge of per­son­nel.

When Un­spun and Guardian Me­dia spoke to Di­al about the al­le­ga­tions she de­nied any wrong­do­ing and dis­missed the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled by the coun­cil­lors as un­true.

Manzanilla councillor Kenwyn Phillip

In Ju­ly, a scan­dal erupt­ed in the cor­po­ra­tion when Ma­haraj re­signed as chair­man of Fi­nance af­ter he was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

And de­spite calls by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) coun­cil­lors for Ma­haraj to step down as coun­cil­lor for the Cu­mu­to/Tamana area, he has re­fused.

Now Di­al has come un­der the mi­cro­scope by cer­tain mem­bers of the coun­cil as re­vealed in part one of an Un­spun in­ves­ti­ga­tion that aired last night in the CNC3 News.

In 2019, the UNC top­pled the PNM and gained con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion’s five of the eight elec­toral dis­tricts.

The cor­po­ra­tion is man­aged by the chair­man Anil Juter­am.

A copy of the let­ter ob­tained dur­ing Un­spun’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion list­ed 11 al­leged breach­es and sev­en ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ures by Di­al.

The let­ter drew ref­er­ence to a Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 19, 2021, in which the coun­cil ap­proved a one-month em­ploy­ment pro­gramme for 50 street clean­ers and eight su­per­vi­sors which was rat­i­fied by the coun­cil at a statu­to­ry meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 28.

There was an un­com­mit­ted sum of $204,000 for this lo­cal health pro­gramme to ad­dress the need for ex­tra san­i­ta­tion, giv­en the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Phillip made a re­quest for work to be­gin in Feb­ru­ary of this year.

At a Feb­ru­ary 4, pub­lic health meet­ing Phillip en­quired about the short term em­ploy­ment pro­gramme on­ly to be told there were oth­er press­ing mat­ters the cor­po­ra­tion was grap­pling with.

It was brought to the coun­cil’s at­ten­tion that the cor­po­ra­tion was faced with a two mil­lion dol­lar deficit.

This was con­tained in the Min­utes of Feb­ru­ary’s Fi­nance Meet­ing ob­tained by Un­spun.

Di­al in­formed the coun­cil that pri­or­i­ties must be set, point­ing out that the ad­min­is­tra­tion should be asked to de­ter­mine whether the pro­gramme was fea­si­ble and in­stead of a res­o­lu­tion be­ing passed with­out any dis­cus­sion or in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Dur­ing March’s Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Phillip again raised the mat­ter.

This time the coun­cil was told by Di­al that the bud­get di­vi­sion had ad­vised that fund­ing un­der this vote be utilised to pay some of the cor­po­ra­tion’s out­stand­ing bills which in­clud­ed in­sur­ance, tele­phone and gas.

Cumuto Tamana councillor Anil Maharaj

Coun­cil was told the cor­po­ra­tion had a $400,000 in­sur­ance bill of which on­ly half had been paid.

UNC coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran ques­tioned if the coun­cil’s ap­proval would be re­quired for a trans­fer of re­leas­es but Di­al ex­plained that ap­proval of coun­cil was need­ed for the trans­fer of al­lo­ca­tion and not a trans­fer of re­leas­es.

Phillip quot­ed Sec­tion 118 of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions’ Act which stat­ed that all mat­ters of fi­nan­cial na­ture must be brought to coun­cil for ap­proval, ques­tion­ing if the res­o­lu­tion tak­en by coun­cil was il­le­gal.

Di­al said im­ple­ment­ing the pro­gramme would put the cor­po­ra­tion in a deep­er fi­nan­cial bind and once fund­ing be­came avail­able the san­i­ta­tion pro­gramme could be giv­en the green light.

Both Phillip and Seecha­ran felt that the coun­cil’s de­ci­sion was de­railed by Di­al who opt­ed to shift the funds to pri­or­i­ty ar­eas.

Up to the time, the UNC coun­cil­lors wrote Min­is­ter Ho­sein the pro­gramme was nev­er im­ple­ment­ed.

The let­ter al­so raised con­cerns re­gard­ing a no­tice­able in­crease in wages and CO­LA pay­ments for two par­tic­u­lar months last year.

While the cor­po­ra­tion’s av­er­age month­ly wages and CO­LA bill has re­mained con­sis­tent at three mil­lion dol­lars, there was an un­usu­al­ly high pay­roll for the months of April and Sep­tem­ber of 2020.

An SGRC doc­u­ment iden­ti­fied as “An analy­sis of wages and co­la in fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2020” which Guardian Me­dia got its hands on showed in April the pay­ment of wages and co­la was $4,585,433 while Sep­tem­ber record­ed a fig­ure of $4,454.138.

“The above nor­mal ex­pen­di­ture for the months of April and Sep­tem­ber 2020 was not ap­proved by the SGRC nor has any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or ex­pla­na­tion been pro­vid­ed to the coun­cil,” the fi­nan­cial state­ment stat­ed.

The coun­cil­lors not­ed in their let­ter that it should be of no small con­cern that in­creased ex­pen­di­ture for April and Sep­tem­ber amount to al­most $1.5 mil­lion.

“Ad­min­is­tra­tion and CEO have failed to pro­vide any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this in­creased ex­pen­di­ture in April and Sep­tem­ber 2020 and or ev­i­dence of coun­cil’s ap­proval for the same,” the let­ter point­ed out.

One ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty high­light­ed by the three chair­men was the coun­cil’s ap­proval of $3,539,000 in wages, CO­LA and over­time al­lowances for Sep­tem­ber’s 2020 Pro­gramme of Works sub­mit­ted by the lo­cal health and tech­ni­cal de­part­ment, while the cor­po­ra­tion’s fi­nan­cial state­ments re­port­ed ex­pens­es to­talling $4,948,785.

“This rep­re­sents an ex­cess of $1,409,000 over the amount ap­proved,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Sangre Grande Regional Corporation Chairman Anil Juteram.

How­ev­er, a cor­po­ra­tion doc­u­ment for wages and CO­LA over­time al­lowances for Sep­tem­ber found that this $1,409,000 ex­cess in ex­pen­di­ture had been ap­proved by the coun­cil.

An­oth­er in­con­sis­ten­cy high­light­ed in the let­ter in­volved the CEO pre­sent­ing to the coun­cil for ap­proval a doc­u­ment ti­tled project pay­ments from the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment for ap­proval for De­cem­ber 2020 at a statu­to­ry meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 28.

The doc­u­ment, the let­ter stat­ed, pur­port­ed to re­quest pay­ment au­tho­ri­sa­tion for 11 con­trac­tors to­talling over $1.7 mil­lion for lo­cal roads, bridges, drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion and dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness.

How­ev­er, the doc­u­ment was not ac­com­pa­nied by copies of cor­re­spond­ing con­tracts to ver­i­fy whether the sums stat­ed on the doc­u­ment were cor­rect.

Al­so, there were no sig­na­tures of any cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fi­cers to con­firm if the jobs had been com­plete or any in­voic­es from con­trac­tors to sup­port pay­ments re­quests.

“Apart from the clear dis­re­gard by the CEO of any pro­cure­ment and or ten­der­ing process­es, the un­ap­proved procur­ing and re­ten­tion of the con­tract­ed ser­vices set out in the doc­u­ment con­sti­tute a breach in Sec­tion 118 of the Act as no re­quest was pre­sent­ed to the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee for ap­proval,” the let­ter stat­ed.

One glar­ing dis­crep­an­cy ob­served by the chair­men stemmed from a Jan­u­ary 28, statu­to­ry meet­ing ti­tled “Pro­gramme of Works for the month of Feb­ru­ary 2021” bear­ing the sig­na­tures of the CEO, prin­ci­pal med­ical and health of­fi­cer, pub­lic health su­per­vi­sor and pub­lic health of­fi­cer came to coun­cil for ap­proval.

This pro­gramme fell un­der the purview of the cor­po­ra­tion’s lo­cal health au­thor­i­ty sec­tion.

The doc­u­ment gave a break­down of wages and co­la al­lowances of work­ers who per­formed most­ly san­i­ta­tion du­ties at 16 dis­tricts in the north-east­ern re­gion which was brought to coun­cil for ap­proval to­talling $1,378,110.

A pe­rusal of the doc­u­ments un­earthed two dif­fer­ent costs for work un­der­tak­en at the Monte Cristo area in San­gre Grande.

One doc­u­ment list­ed the ex­pen­di­ture at $52,020 while an­oth­er doc­u­ment signed by the CEO and three oth­er cor­po­ra­tion health of­fi­cers reg­is­tered the fig­ure at $526,020.

Sangre Grande Northwest councillor Nassar Hosein

“The over­all to­tal should in­stead have been $904,710 and not $1,378,110. This in­con­sis­ten­cy of $473,400 was ca­su­al­ly ex­plained by the CEO as a ty­po de­spite so many se­nior of­fi­cers sign­ing the doc­u­ment. Whether this al­most half a mil­lion dol­lars worth of dis­crep­an­cy on the part of the CEO is ab­ject care­less­ness, or worse, is a mat­ter for de­ter­mi­na­tion but the fact re­mains, nei­ther is ac­cept­able,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Read Part 2 in

to­mor­row’s pa­per