There has not been cooperation between the Lethem Town Council and the RDC
Dear Editor,
Please permit me to offer some clarifications to your article captioned ‘Lethem Town Council’s purchases from mayor’s wife under scrutiny over procurement’, published in your Tuesday edition, February 21.
Had I been contacted, and several references were made of my involvement, I would have been able to shed some light to give a clearer understanding of what actually transpired. I must say here and now that I had written the Town Clerk since November, 2016, informing her of the unspent balances that needed to be expended before the end of 2016 under line item, ‘Subventions to Local Authorities’, a line item that the Town Council would have been aware of since throughout the year, salaries for certain categories of workers, and the payment of utility bills, inclusive of street lighting, were met from this head. She was asked to submit a work programme for the unspent balances. To date, that work programme has not been submitted.
I tried several times to make contact via telephone but was repeatedly met with the assurance that the Town Clerk will return my call. Nothing!
I was not surprised since the Town Council, led by the Mayor, Mr Carlton Beckles, had adopted the posture of noncooperation with the Regional Democratic Council. This was evident in the fact that not one single invitation to take part in the Local Government Sub-Committee of the RDC was honoured by his council. Additionally, he refused to be part of the consultation process of the Plan of Action for Regional Development (PARD), an initiative of the Ministry of Communities. These can be substantiated by the Regional Chairman, Mr Bryan Allicock.
Had he been attending the Local Government Sub-Committee meetings, where all relevant information in respect to local governance is shared and debated, the Mayor, and by extension, the Town Council would have been informed, and would have been in a position to act on the information so provided; but no. The Mayor wants to dictate what constitutes collaboration. He cannot seem to fathom the fact that collaboration is total.
Instead, the Mayor and his council gave directives to the Regional administration with regard to the awarding of contracts contrary to all good practices and contrary to the Procurement Act, an Act that will be my judge. The Mayor did not pay attention to the direction taken by the Ministry of Communities in regard to the awarding of contracts which was geared at widening the resource pool of the respective regions; directions and directives that I am duty-bound to follow.
With regard to the subject matter with the procurement from Ms Theresa Torres, the Regional administration objected to the single sourcing, as we in the area know that there are many other established entities in Lethem, equally experienced in the supply of the items that were listed in your article and insisted that the competitive bidding process be followed.
I am aware that complaints have been made to the Chairman of the PNCR, Mr Basil Williams, asking that all the big contracts be awarded to six named contractors, and I explained that the procurement process is a transparent one, and that every citizen has the right to apply to be prequalified and to be awarded contacts, a position that the Chairman concurred with.
Even though I am a known member of the PNCR and a staunch believer in the coalition movement, in undertaking my responsibilities as Regional Executive Officer of the Region I have always endeavoured to treat every single citizen with fairness and equity.
I wish to conclude therefore by offering a reminder of the President’s thrust for social cohesion which cannot be attained by the exclusion of groups or their representatives. That would indeed be a recipe for the failure of our mandate of inclusionary democracy, a commitment of the Minister of Communities.
Yours faithfully, Carl Parker