THE beleaguered North Lanarkshire council yesterday suspended two more officials as the Government tightened the screw over its #4m direct labour fiasco by cutting the time the authority has in which to respond.
Meanwhile, the council's chief executive cleared himself and senior councillors of blame over the debacle in a statement instantly condemned by Labour's political opponents.
Serving formal notice on the council yesterday, the Scottish Office cut from four weeks to three the time the council has to respond, pointing out that action started last week over the multi-million pound hole in the council's finances.
The serving of the notice means the council is now effectively guilty until it proves itself innocent. If satisfactory answers are not forthcoming, the least action it will face is an enforced re-tendering of all existing direct labour organisation (DLO) contracts.
The complete disbandment and abolition of the department is still a real option, and to demonstrate decisive action yesterday, chief executive Andrew Cowe suspended building services director Graham Forsyth and Iain MacDonald, a manager in the same department. Mr Forsyth was believed to be on a salary of around #70,000.
Mr Ken MacLeod, head of building and roads in the same department, was the first official to be suspended.
At his home in Cumbernauld, Mr Forsyth refused to comment on the suspension.
Mr Cowe said he accepted ''full responsibility for advising the council on the recovery process which will be necessary to restore confidence in the council and ensure this never happens again''.
This studiously avoided accepting responsibility for what had already happened, and yet Mr Cowe was also at pains to admonish the local political leaders for ''an internal departmental failure of the most serious kind''.
The chief executive claimed: ''The monitoring reports presented to councillors gave no hint of this situation, and no councillors - leaders, conveners, and committee members - could be expected to know what was about to happen. The information they had at their disposal was clearly incorrect and misleading.''
He said all DLO book-keeping now had to be supervised directly by the director of finance, effectively an admission that the department had run out of control. North Lanarkshire said both council leader Harry Mr McGuigan and his deputy, Mr Jim McCabe, were ''unavailable'' for comment.
SNP group leader Richard Lyle claimed officials were being left to ''carry the can'' for Mr McGuigan.
The SNP will try to force Mr McGuigan to quit as leader following the decision of the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth constituency Labour party to call for his resignation.
The SNP also claimed key councillors and officials were absent from Friday's special policy and resources meeting. Provost Vincent Mathieson, general purposes convener Alex Craig, and director of administration John O'Hagan were all on a visit to Prato in Italy.
Scottish Tory chairman Raymond Robertson asked whether there is ''anyone out there who believes that Donald Dewar will take effective, decisive action?''
Scottish Lib-Dem MP Donald Gorrie said it was now time for Mr McGuigan to be held accountable for the mess.
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