Sascha Wil­son

Starved for funds, the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion will be re­quest­ing an ad­di­tion­al $7.3 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the Mid-Year Bud­get re­view to keep them afloat un­til the end of the fi­nan­cial year.

With their op­er­a­tions be­ing crip­pled, coun­cil mem­bers com­plain that they can­not prop­er­ly meet the needs of their burgess­es and it is in this con­text they are ask­ing Gov­ern­ment to pull the reigns on giv­ing Siparia bor­ough sta­tus un­til these is­sues are sort­ed out.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence at the cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayhroo took is­sue with re­cent state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“That state­ment that was made by Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Tues­day night, that we are re­sist­ing Siparia be­com­ing a bor­ough is far from the truth.

We want Siparia to be­come a bor­ough but be­fore we do so, let us deal with the prob­lems af­fect­ing the re­gion and bring it to a state that the burgess­es will see some form of re­lief and they will see why we want to take it in­to bor­ough sta­tus,” Mayhroo charged.

Ex­press­ing dis­gust with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment’s al­lo­ca­tions to the cor­po­ra­tion, Mayhroo point­ed out that 29 of their ve­hi­cles need re­pairs and are parked up.

“Trans­port de­part­ment is the life­line of any cor­po­ra­tion. If your Trans­port De­part­ment is not func­tion­ing, then you are un­able to car­ry out your func­tions and a num­ber of work­ers will just sit idly by wait­ing to col­lect pay,” he said.

Mayhroo is call­ing on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to vis­it the cor­po­ra­tion to dis­cuss and re­solve their is­sues.

He said the al­lo­ca­tion for ma­te­r­i­al and sup­ply was a measly $800,000 and when di­vid­ed, each coun­cil­lor will be al­lo­cat­ed $80,000 for a year.

“That’s the mon­ey you use to buy ma­te­ri­als to re­pair roads and so on in the re­gion. To­day, three-quar­ter of the roads in our re­gion is in poor con­di­tion, our lo­cal roads are in very poor con­di­tion be­cause we do not have the re­sources to main­tain those roads.”

He added, “Not on­ly the al­lo­ca­tion but the time­ly re­leas­es on the al­lo­ca­tion is al­so a prob­lem, be­cause right now we are run­ning on cred­it. We have reached a stage now where sup­pli­ers are re­fus­ing to give us any line of cred­it again be­cause we have maxed out our cred­it with all our sup­pli­ers. We are re­al­ly, re­al­ly in a bad po­si­tion in this cor­po­ra­tion with re­spect to the al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources.”

Ex­plain­ing what the $7.3 mil­lion will be used for, he said, “Gov­ern­ment con­tri­bu­tions to NIS, wages and CO­LA, tele­phone ex­pens­es, short term em­ploy­ment, pro­mo­tion and pub­lic­i­ty, the var­i­ous votes where there is short­fall...This ad­di­tion­al re­sources we re­quest­ing have noth­ing in it to reach the burgess­es with re­spect to re­pairs to roads, drains and meet­ing the needs of the re­gion.”

Ques­tion­ing whether they are be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised, Mayhroo said, “Is it a po­lit­i­cal move to sti­fle the func­tions of these UNC-run cor­po­ra­tions? Is it a po­lit­i­cal ploy be­cause Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion is com­ing lat­er down the road?”

He al­so made it clear they stand ready to fight against any move to re­trench work­ers at the cor­po­ra­tion.

Mean­while, act­ing chair­man Chan­dra Ramd­hars­ingh said 13 cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees are in quar­an­tine and they have no fund­ing for gloves, boots and chem­i­cals to sani­tise the of­fices and build­ings. They al­so can­not main­tain the var­i­ous build­ings, in­clud­ing the Daisy Voisin hub, Ir­win Park or the mar­ket.

She al­so com­plained that the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en them no fund­ing to as­sist with the up­com­ing pop­u­lar cel­e­bra­tion known as the Feast of La Div­ina Pas­to­ra.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS