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President Irfaan announced over the weekend the embattled Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharmalall, has requested he be granted administrative leave and he has approved it.
Village Voice News reached out to veteran trade unionist Lincoln Lewis for a comment on the president’s action. Lewis said the president is misguided and he is concerned that for three years Ali has failed to learn the public sector system or has allowed himself to not be properly advised.
According to the trade unionist the minister cannot go on administrative leave because the rules of the public sector agencies do not apply to him. “A minister works in the public interest and is not an employee within the public sector. He is a political appointee and the rules of the public service and sector do not apply to him.”
Lewis pointed out that administrative leave applies to persons such as permanent secretary, heads of agency, and those employed within public service and public sector.
Ministers and parliamentary secretaries who are accused of committing infractions are subjected to investigation guided by the respective law(s), he noted. In Dharamlall’s case, where he is accused of raping a minor, Lewis said this is a matter for the police and police must act.
The trade unionist said the matter is in the public domain in graphic detail and the police should have already started an investigation. There is a double standard by acting Commissioner of Police Clifton Hicken; were this case that of an ordinary man, Hicken would have already issued the instruction to proceed with an arrest and investigation, he charged.
Dharamlall is not above the law and the arms of the law must reach him, Lewis insisted.
The trade unionist further insisted President Ali must fire the minister, instantly, because the damning allegation is not only deserving of a criminal investigation but makes the minister unsuitable for public office. “This man is no stranger to allegations of sexual misconduct and keeping him as a minister emboldens him,’ he emphatically stated.
The allegation of rape is a serious offence and this minister must be fired reiterated Lewis who is also General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC). He referred this publication to the GTUC’s statement on the matter and said the views in that statement represent him and the members of the federated body.
In the statement published on Sunday, GTUC said “society should not sit quietly and accept the teen’s very articulate claim being swept aside without a thorough and independent investigation of the allegations made. To do otherwise would be a failure on behalf of this government, but most significantly a failure of society, Rights of the Child organisations, religious bodies, women’s organisations, every woman, and every mother and all those to whom she appealed for help, in her words drawing comparison to the 20 children killed in the Mahdia fire, don’t wait for her to died.”
Circulating in social media, since last week, are graphic recounts of rape, sodomy and oral sex allegedly committed by the minister on a minor from the indigenous community. According to the messages, the 16-year-old was a contestant in an Indigenous Pageant and the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development was her sponsor. Through the alleged interaction and association with the minister, he allegedly sexually violated her in the most brutal manner and took her innocence. As reported in messages, the teen was told “I am your first and from this day on you are mine and I own you.”
