Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen is await­ing a for­mal re­port on the dis­ap­pear­ance of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $90,000 from the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC), as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the miss­ing funds.

Ameen con­firmed this in a What­sApp Mes­sage yes­ter­day but did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

A Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing is sched­uled for to­day in the Cor­po­ra­tion’s Coun­cil Cham­bers where the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Heather Craw­ford is ex­pect­ed to brief coun­cil mem­bers, in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris, on the mat­ter. The meet­ing will not be open to the pub­lic.

The miss­ing funds, re­port­ed­ly com­pris­ing fees and tax­es col­lect­ed be­tween April 30 and May 16, were dis­cov­ered miss­ing by an em­ploy­ee on Mon­day around 3.15 pm.

Last Fri­day, the em­ploy­ee se­cured $6,534.50 in a four-draw­er fire­proof cab­i­net which al­ready con­tained $83,465.50. The mon­ey was in sealed Re­pub­lic Bank en­velopes.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told the cab­i­net, lo­cat­ed on the west­ern side of the SFCC build­ing, was locked. How­ev­er, when the em­ploy­ee checked the cab­i­net on Mon­day af­ter­noon, the mon­ey had van­ished.

The San Fer­nan­do Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) was im­me­di­ate­ly no­ti­fied and be­gan con­duct­ing in­ter­views with staff.

Sev­er­al em­ploy­ees had ac­cess to both the cab­i­net and its key. Cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials said no one had been au­tho­rised to re­move the mon­ey.

Act­ing Cor­po­ral Khan is in­ves­ti­gat­ing.