By Kurt Campbell
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The National Assembly approved funding for five Administrative Regions for the fiscal year 2014 as allocated in the National 2014 Budget.
The Regions are: Region One, Barima Waini; Region Two, Pomeroon Supenaam; Region Three, Essequibo Island West Demerara, Region Four, Demerara Mahaica and Region Five, Mahaica Berbice.
Region One received a total of $1.4B under current expenditure and $273M under capital expenditure and will collectively deal with services relating to regional administration and finance, public works, education delivery and health.
Region Two was allotted $2.2B under current expenditure and another $403M under capital and will go towards similar services as Region One, along with agriculture. Region Three received a total of $2.9B under current expenditure and $326M under capital.
Region Four received the second largest regional funding, totaling $3.3B under current and $228M under capital.
Meanwhile, Region Five current expenditure amounted to $1.6B while its capital expenditure totaled $318M.
These five Regions took Members of the House well over six hours to consider line by line.
Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker along with his team from the Ministry was grilled by the Opposition to provide information and clarity where they found it was missing.
Whittaker wasted no time to provide answers and committed to providing answers at a later time where it wasn’t readily available.
The other five regions will be considered on Monday, April 14.
