RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Chaos erupt­ed at a spe­cial statu­to­ry meet­ing of the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion on Mon­day as of­fi­cials launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to miss­ing ma­te­ri­als from a cor­po­ra­tion stock­pile.

The meet­ing, led by May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo, ad­dressed al­le­ga­tions of the unau­tho­rised re­moval of ma­te­ri­als by cor­po­ra­tion mem­bers.

How­ev­er, a walk­out soon fol­lowed. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, May­or Mayrhoo ac­cused some coun­cil­lors of by­pass­ing stan­dard pro­ce­dures to ac­cess ma­te­ri­als.

“Dur­ing the meet­ing, it was found that cer­tain coun­cil­lors made calls for the trans­fer of ma­te­ri­als, which were dropped in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions. The ma­te­r­i­al is not ac­tu­al­ly miss­ing; it was used up in oth­er ar­eas. How­ev­er, we are now putting a sys­tem in place to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty for every ounce of ma­te­r­i­al that comes in­to that stock­pile,” Mayrhoo re­vealed.

He crit­i­cised Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts and UNC coun­cil­lor Deryk Bowrin for their lack of sup­port, ac­cus­ing them of align­ing with the PNM de­spite their UNC af­fil­i­a­tion.

“Vic­tor Roberts and Bowrin are tak­ing a stance that aligns with PNM coun­cil­lors, rais­ing ques­tions about their po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty,” claimed Mayrhoo.

He men­tioned that the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion is work­ing to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing a sys­tem to track stock­pile ma­te­ri­als.

Mayrhoo al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the lack of leg­isla­tive mea­sures to re­move al­der­men who act against the bor­ough’s in­ter­ests.

“There should be leg­is­la­tion to dis­ci­pline and re­move in­di­vid­u­als who ob­struct bor­ough op­er­a­tions,” he said.

How­ev­er, Al­der­man Roberts chal­lenged Mayrhoo’s claims. He al­leged that an en­gi­neer said it was the may­or who had re­port­ed­ly di­rect­ed the re­moval of ma­te­ri­als.

Roberts said he in­tends to present ev­i­dence to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau and the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, pos­si­bly trig­ger­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Giv­ing his side of the con­tro­ver­sial meet­ing, Roberts said, “The may­or start­ed act­ing hos­tile af­ter the re­port re­vealed his role in us­ing a pri­vate con­trac­tor to re­move ma­te­ri­als from the gov­ern­ment stock­pile.”

Roberts added that the PNM mem­bers walked out, leav­ing the meet­ing with­out a quo­rum. He claimed Bowrin was al­ready out­side.

“The en­tire op­po­si­tion team left due to the may­or’s con­duct,” Roberts claimed. He de­nied that he and Bowrin had walked out with the PNM.

Roberts, who de­scribed him­self as a ded­i­cat­ed UNC Al­der­man, voiced his com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy.

“I have in­for­ma­tion on cor­rup­tion with­in the cor­po­ra­tion, some of which pre-dates my in­volve­ment, and I will ex­pose it. I am com­mit­ted to do­ing what is right,” he said.

A mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed No­vem­ber 5 from the en­gi­neer­ing and sur­vey of­fi­cer stat­ed that re­ports had been made of miss­ing ma­te­r­i­al from a stock­pile lo­cat­ed at Hick­ling Vil­lage, Fyz­abad.

Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice lat­er re­alised the com­pound was not se­cure.

An in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed Oc­to­ber 10 in­di­cat­ed that all tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers were due to re­spond on the method for re­ceiv­ing and is­su­ing stock­pile ma­te­r­i­al, as well as pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of all ma­te­r­i­al pur­chas­es for each elec­toral dis­trict for fis­cal year 2023/2024.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed: “His Wor­ship the May­or made a re­quest to use a pri­vate back­hoe and truck to trans­port ma­te­r­i­al for the dis­trict of Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique North due to a lack of op­er­a­tional equip­ment in trans­port.”

On Oc­to­ber 9, for­mer UNC coun­cil­lor Ja­son Ali, who lat­er left the UNC and joined the PNM, made a re­port of a lar­ce­ny of ma­te­ri­als to Sgt Ganesh of the Fyz­abad Po­lice Sta­tion, which trig­gered an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.