Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 27, 2018 News
Former Deputy Mayor of Georgetown, Sherod Duncan has pointed to several instances in which he says Town Clerk of the Mayor and City Council, (M&CC), Royston King bypassed the prescribed procurement process for the doling out of contracts.
In his testimony yesterday before the Commission of Inquiry, (CoI) into the affairs of City Hall, Duncan raised concerns at the manner in which the City’s administration deals with the distribution of contracts.
He particularly highlighted what he described as the wanton abuse by Council’s administration of the Emergency Clause under Section 234 of the Municipal District Council‘s Act Chapter 280:1.
The clause speaks to the variation of tender procedure in cases of emergency.
Duncan, however, noted that the Emergency Clause is applied for almost every contract handed out by City Hall; more particularly by the Office of the Town Clerk.
“If you have an emergency and you can’t go to tender, you are allowed to bypass that system but you must report to Council afterwards. (However) everything seems to be using the Emergency Clause. I noted this from the time I became a Councillor in 2016,” said Duncan, who also chaired the Legal Affairs Committee of the Georgetown M&CC.
“During my tenure as Councillor, Deputy Mayor and Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee, I have never seen a single contract come before Council for vetting and approval.
Except for the parking meter contract, which took months of agitation before the administration yielded to the Councillor’s request to peruse the document, no other contract was forthcoming.
“In fact, it was through the intervention of the Minister of Communities that Councillors were able to have that contract at their disposal.”
“I would argue that around 90 -95 per cent of the work of council is subcontracted out from acquisition of stationery to vehicles, garbage collection and disposal. So it should involve a process of tender and vetting by Council.”
“But the only tendering process that I can recall published during my time at City Hall is the one for the repair of the Stabroek Market Clock. “
Besides the controversial Parking Meter contract, the former Deputy Mayor listed the $125M contract which was handed to Chung Global for the clearing for Le Repentir Cemetery among the contracts which were listed as emergencies.
“And that is why it is my humble estimation, that there is a wanton abuse by the Council’s administration of the Emergency Clause because you cannot manage a Council for three years using ‘emergency’ in every instance to bypass the tendering process, ”Duncan added.
In addition, Duncan stated that while the Town Clerk is legally obligated to circulate information as it relates to any contract or arrangement to the Council, he has continually ignored any request for such information.
“A section of the Chapter 28:01 refers to the Town Clerk as a creature of the Council– he doesn’t work independent of the Council. It is the council that sets the policy and it is the Town Clerk that executes those policies.
But clearly, the Town Clerk has rejected this legal precept,” he told the Commission
Armed with piles of records, Duncan pointed to a number of instances in which the request for certain information by members of the Council was ignored.
He alluded specifically to the attempt by the Mayor Patricia Chase -Green and a selected few to implement a metered parking system in the city without proper vetting of the full Council.
According to Duncan, the whole issue caught the Council by surprise. “It was at a meeting that the Mayor announced quite flippantly that she would be meeting with a company to sign an agreement to implement parking meters in the city. The matter was never raised or discussed at the level of the Council.”
“Even information from the Auditor General Report on City Hall was never brought forward or discussed by the level of Council, even though it was requested.”
Duncan said too, that the City administration has habitually withheld information from the Council on key issues.
“One of the things the administration has used perennially is an excuse that ‘X’ or ‘Y’ was the decision of a previous council. But there is no evidence in the form of minutes of the meeting to support such claims.”
“They used this occasion as well to say that the Parking Meter contract was signed by the previous council,” Duncan said.
“In fact, there are many instances in which councillors would have asked for the minutes of the meeting containing the decision of previous Councils and the information has not been forthcoming,”Duncan added. He specified that the information requested was within the remit of the Town Clerk— as chief custodian of Council’s records.
He told the Commission that the issues formed a list of matters on the no-confidence motion which was brought against King.
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