By Shirley Thomas
ACTING in accordance with the powers with which it has been vested, the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has moved to regulate and control traffic within the City of Georgetown, in an attempt to bring some semblance of order to the parking situation which has gone haywire, particularly at minibus parks.Accordingly, the M&CC has recently deployed trained City Constabulary ranks on the streets to undertake this onerous task.
The M&CC says it has noted, with concern, a letter to the Editor appearing on page 7 of a local publication dated Sunday, January 31, 2016, in which the following contention is stated: “After disastrous past experiences, the City Council should not be allowed to preside over parking arrangements for minibus and taxi parks in the City. The Municipal and District Councils Act gives it no such power. It is a police function, which appears to have been abandoned as the City Council assumed jurisdiction.”
M&CC Public Relations Officer Debra Lewis has debunked this contention. She cites Chapter 28:01 of the Municipal and District Councils Act, Clauses 272 and 274, which read thus: (272) “A Council shall have power, subject to the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act, the Roads Act, and the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, to construct, maintain, repair, protect, and carry out works for the betterment of Council roads in its Council area, and to regulate and control traffic thereon.”
On ‘Traffic Control’, Section 274 reads: “Without prejudice to the generality of the power to regulate and control traffic on Council roads, conferred by Section 272 but subject to the provisions thereof, the Council may: establish, maintain and control car parks; erect and maintain parking meters; regulate the standing and parking of vehicles on Council roads; erect and maintain traffic control signals and traffic signs on Council roads; regulate the speed of vehicles on Council roads; designate particular Council roads as one-way roads or one-way streets, and require all vehicles thereon to move in one specified direction; require vehicles to stop before entering or crossing any Council road, or to yield to other traffic; and restrict the use of any Council roads to vehicles of specified types or weights.”
FULFILLING MANDATE
Ms Lewis outlined that the Council has, for some time, not been fulfilling that mandate, and so it has now come as something relatively new and ‘not known’ to many persons.
“We would have spoken to the Traffic Chief; and he also knows the laws, and he has pledged to help train our ranks,” Ms Lewis affirmed.
She said that ranks of the Guyana Police Force recently conducted theoretical and practical training for the ranks of the City Constabulary, and this has signalled the beginning of a closer relationship between the Guyana Police Force and the City Constabulary.
Ms Lewis added that ranks of the City Constabulary would have already had basic training in policing, but this is something new that they would have now become involved in.
Another benefit of the collaboration, the Traffic Chief disclosed, is that with part of the workload of the standard police traffic ranks being lifted from their shoulders, they can now concentrate more on the remote areas of Guyana while Council concentrates on Georgetown.
Meanwhile, plans are on the cards for City Council’s Litter Prevention Unit to recruit more ranks and undertake a more efficient running of that division, Ms Lewis said.
With diversification of duties and responsibilities within the City Constabulary, there are exciting times ahead, and the unit will no longer be seen as a bunch of “market constables”, as its ranks have commonly been called by persons who lack knowledge and understanding of the functioning of the department, Ms Lewis said.
