PURAN Brothers Disposal Inc. has resumed working in Georgetown’s ‘Group 7’ although no payment has yet been made to the company by the Mayor and City Council (M&CC). They are doing so in “good faith,” Manager Kalesh Puran told the Chronicle. According to him in an invited comment, the city councillors have promised to make the payments available soon. The company has been waiting on payment of some $40M owed them by the M&CC since last year August.
The amount owing is for services carried out in Georgetown’s ‘Groups 7 and 8.’ Citizens in these areas had been left with minimal garbage-collection services ever since the city council’s trucks have been assigned to clear these locations.
Group 7 takes in areas in the city such as Costello Housing Scheme, West and East La Penitence, North- East La Penitence, Middle Road, La Penitence, Jeeboo Land, and Extra Nuclear.
Group 8, which has recently been awarded to Cevons Management, includes Queenstown, Alberttown, North and South Cummingsburg, Kingston and Woolford Avenue.
Contacted for a comment recently, Acting Town Clerk, Carol Sooba said contracts are being prepared for Puran Brothers and that certain office difficulties were preventing this from happening in a timely manner. For instance, she lamented the fact that there were no computers and that councillors were refusing to sign vouchers.
Meanwhile, Puran had told the Chronicle recently that the last payment made to them by the City Council was last October for services outside of Groups 7 and 8. He lamented the fact that they cannot continue to work without being paid for so many months. The company has time and again checked with the Treasury Department but could not secure a proper answer with regard to payment, or at least a proposal that they might be able to work with.
“We are hoping for some payment soon. This is an ongoing issue. It’s a new year; we need to move forward. We have been going through this for many years,” said Puran.
He had observed that Georgetown was recently cleaned to a certain level, but is now returning to a deplorable state. He believes this is so because the company’s four garbage trucks were pulled off the road.