Latest update May 10th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 06, 2021 News
Kaieteur News – Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI), under its former boss, Dr. Richard Van West-Charles, spent a total of $89M in parties for two years, according to Managing Director (MD) of the company, Shaik Baksh.
Baksh made this disclosure while he was speaking during a Press Conference, held via ZOOM, about GWI’s financial performance for 2020. He started off by saying that before August of last year, the company was on the verge of collapse, stating that one of the reasons for this was because of GWI’s “reckless spending” from 2015 to 2020.
“And I have some information here to give you,” Baksh said, “to tell you that rather than being able to meet the employees’ pay roll costs, the expenditures were reckless.”
Part of the spending that Baksh was referring to was the company’s party bill for the years 2018 and 2019.
“We already heard about the 2018, $30M for anniversary and Christmas party but really its $34M”, the current GWI boss told reporters.
Kaieteur News had reported last week on the $30M party bill in an article headlined “Cash-strapped GWI spent $30M on 2018 Christmas party, Anniversary retreat”.
A leaked internal document had illustrated the amount as expenditure by the company. GWI spent some $15.58M on activities for the entity’s anniversary celebrations, held in May 2018. The anniversary celebrations included a retreat and a prize giving and awards ceremony, held at the Ramada Princess Hotel.
Finally, for the year, the document had revealed that the utility company hosted a Christmas party expending some $14.5M.
During Friday’s Press Conference, however, Baksh said that after the accounts were reconciled, it was found that GWI had actually spent $34M on parties for that year and not $30M. The GWI boss then went on to reveal that the party bill increased significantly the following year.
“Members of the media, in 2019, it was worse. We have the figures here now showing $55M being spent for old year’s night party, anniversary and Christmas party for staff. We have all the invoices here, all the vouchers everything and this can be subject to any audit”, Baksh said.
The MD did not give a breakdown as to how much was spent on each event. Totaling the two bills for 2018 and 2019, GWI spent $89M for parties.
GWI’s former CEO, Dr. Van West-Charles had said that the spending of the monies on parties is a form of investment in staff, during a recent Press Conference held to address GWI’s move to send home some of its workers.
The former MD during the question segment said that a Kaieteur News’ article was brought to his attention of $30M being spent “on a year’s activity for staff”.
He went on to tell reporters that the move to spend the money was not “a luxury” but rather an investment in the employees. He had posited that the 21st century management speaks to the need to invest in workers and had put forward his case that “On the CARICOM HR plan that we (Guyana) have subscribed to, speaks to the need of investing in your workers.”
Another reason he gave for the party bill was that many of the GWI workers were not acquainted with their company and suggested that the parties was a way that they could meet and greet their colleagues.
Van West-Charles had also hinted that GWI had spent more money on staff to provide “acceptable toilet facilities, lunch facilities and over-alls for the staff”.
The ex-GWI boss then reasoned that it is important to invest in employees in order to keep them committed and loyal.
GWI’s expenditure under Van West-Charles tenure came under the radar in light of the company’s position that it was essentially cash-strapped, to the point where it was unable to pay its electricity bills for that year.
It was also reported last year that GWI owed the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) some $7 billion for the period 2018 to 2020 and that the power company was hoping to enlist the assistance of the newly elected Irfaan Ali administration to have the company pay off some of that debt.
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