Ameen: Where did money go for road rehabilitation?

St Augustine MP Khadijah Ameen is calling on government to investigate the $200 million which was allocated to the Secondary Roads Rehabilitation and Improvement Company.

Speaking during her contribution to the budget debate on October 8, she said $100 million was initially allocated to the Local Government Ministry before the company was formed.

“The next year the company got an additional $100 million and the company was subsequently shifted to the Ministry of Works and Transport. You have $200 million to be given to deal with secondary roads. You have thousands of secondary roads all over the country in terrible condition and you can’t deliver?

She said this was more wastage of money, as the money could have gone to the regional corporations to fix their roads.

“You know what we have in the Ministry of Works and Transport now? We have audits, claims of corruption, and roads not being paved. Regional corporations never got $200 million to fix their roads. Why didn’t you give that money to the corporations? I am calling for a full investigation into that secondary roads company and the $200 million that seems to have gone into thin air.”

Ameen said corporations were being hampered in paying contractors for projects.

“Regional corporations are statutory bodies. The Finance Ministry will release money to the Rural Development and Local Government Ministry, who will in turn release it to the statutory bodies that fall under them.

"When the time comes, the regional corporations will do estimates for their projects and make requests for funds, asking the ministry to confirm they are getting the money. The regional corporations will get a confirmation of funds from the ministry’s permanent secretary, and on that authority, the CEO of the corporation can engage in contracts with suppliers, contractors, people who pave roads, etc.

“This government has had requests for funds coming from the regional corporations for their development projects. They give them confirmation of funds, they went ahead and signed contracts with contractors and the work started. Then the government came and said, procurement. We’re not going to give you this money again. We want you to tell us when your projects are done and we will pay the contractors.”

She said the ministry was insisting it would not release money it had previously confirmed to the corporation to be released.

“The regional corporation as a legal entity signed a contract with a company to do work in the community, and they have a legal obligation to pay that contractor once the work is finished. The ministry should release that money to the regional corporation. If the contractor has completed, the ministry should have the money on the books so the contractor can be paid. As it is now, the corporations have engaged contractors in contracts worth 100s of millions of dollars and the ministry refuses to release the money.”

Ameen also called on the Finance Minister to do as promised and increase the salaries of local government councillors.

“The act on local government reform gives the Finance Minister the power to determine how much councillors will be paid and what their other allowances will be. I want to tell the population that councillors currently have a stipend of $4,360 per month. This is a section the government could proclaim and get passed. The power is in their hands.”

She said the travelling allowance for public officers was $1,860 and should be raised based on fuel cost alone. She said most public officers and MPs got vehicle tax exemptions, which should be extended to local government councillors, in addition to a motor vehicle loan.

Ameen said councillors’ secretarial staff were being paid under minimum wage with a stipend of $3,000 before taxes based on a previous Cabinet note. She said increasing the salaries would take a Cabinet note or legal mechanism to discard the current Cabinet note which gave life to the positions and they could be paid at a similar rate as a clerk in the regional corporations.

She also called for an increase in the amount allocated for incidentals at councillors’ offices, currently $1,000 a month. She said that covered ink, stationery, a phone for the office, water, tea and coffee.

Ameen said government was failing to develop the local tourism industry as regional corporations did not receive enough money to repair the local roads to such areas.

She said truck-borne water from corporations was meant for places that did not have pipe-borne infrastructure, but when people could get water from the Water and Sewerage Authority, they called on councillors who were forced to use up the water allowance.

Ameen called for an investigation into how $43 million was transferred to CEPEP and the National Reforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme (NRWRP) in September. She asked how the funding was spent so close to the end of the financial year.

The MP said the ministry also contributed to the dengue crisis by firing litter wardens, cutting back on scavenging, underfunding spraying and not collecting garbage.