TOWN Clerk Royston King said on Tuesday that the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is preparing to re-engage their two main garbage contractors, Puran Brothers Disposal Services and Cevons Waste Management Inc. under new conditions, especially since the contracts are up for review in October.

“We are preparing to re-engage our contractors within another month, to open new talks with them…and to set new conditions so that we can move forward,” King said at a press conference at City Hall. City Hall, through its Solid Waste Management Department, has undertaken to provide garbage collection and disposal throughout Georgetown, with assistance from a few small contractors. But King reported yesterday that the trucks and other equipment belonging to M&CC are very old and have never been subjected to this type of pressure before, especially since the municipality was depending on the contractors.

“They’re now being put to the test,” King offered, and this, he said, is affecting the way the M&CC is collecting the city’s waste. However, King said he was very pleased with the Solid Waste Management Department and that although excellence in this type of service has not been achieved, he is satisfied with the effort thus far. He referred to the constraints facing the municipality at the moment in that while it is receiving $78-80M in revenue each month, at least $50M has to be spent on solid waste alone.

Limited capacity
According to King, the M&CC is now moving to procure trucks from overseas, so that it can eventually cover 60 percent of garbage collection and divide the remaining 40 percent between contractors. “While we have been paying and building private contractors, improving their capacity, we have neglected our own capacity, so we really have limited capacity to do what we’re doing,” King said. “So we must re-think our operations and build our capacity and so if we hire contractors, they will not be doing the bulk of the work,” he added.

Meanwhile, King had earlier said that the withdrawal of services by the two contractors has opened up an opportunity for the M&CC to “rethink” its approach to providing this service to the city. “There are a number of approaches we are looking at and have already discussed. It’s very frightening when contractors can actually withdraw their services at their own whims and fancies and the city is left vulnerable to all kinds of public health and environmental challenges,” said King.

“While we know we owe monies to the contractors, we also believe that they have a civic responsibility to ensure the integrity of our environment. Therefore, we were a little disappointed, particularly since we were also talking with them in finding a way forward in terms of paying them,” King said.

The two contractors opted to pull their garbage-collection services from the city due to outstanding balances from the M&CC. King told city councillors in July that the M&CC was finding it increasingly difficult to honour its financial obligations to the contractors. He said Council has been trying to keep up with current bills, although it has outstanding sums for the years 2015 and 2016. King said it was “extremely difficult” for the Council to sustain payments to these contractors, because the municipality is being asked to do more with less resources.