TOWN Clerk Royston King is now claiming that the contract that the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) gave to Astrolobe Technology Inc. to install a structured parking system in Georgetown cannot be found in the official records of the council. But Chief Executive Officer of Astrolobe, Mr. Saratu Phillips, is in possession of a letter from King, dated October 6, 2015, acknowledging that he is aware that M&CC has this contract with the company.
In the letter seen by this newspaper, King said: “I am aware that you have a signed contract with the council to do paid parking.” An area in East Street was subsequently identified to roll out a pilot project.
At a press conference on Monday, following his visit to Mexico and Panama with the Mayor and other councillors, King had reported: “The contract with Astrolobe is not in the official records of the council and even though we had given Mr. Saratu an opportunity to make a presentation, that particular agreement is not within the official records; not within the archives of the M&CC.
“I have seen a copy of that contract. It’s not really a contract; it’s an agreement, and I’m aware of that agreement, but it was not placed formally in the records of the council and therefore we do not recognise it.”
Phillips had told the Chronicle that his contract with M&CC was signed since 2007 and that he was “shocked” to learn that it is now being given to someone else. “The issue that first jumped out at me is that I have an exclusive contract already to do parking with the M&CC and they are dealing with a new company as if I no longer exist.”
Phillips came to Guyana in 2006 and had put together a team of information technology professionals who were looking at transferring other technologies from the United States to Guyana. From December 2006, Phillips said his team worked with the City Council until October 2007, when he obtained an exclusive contract, valid for 25 years, from the municipality to design the parking system.
“It was going to run the City Council close to US$2M to implement a simple parking system and they didn’t have the funds at the time, so the idea was for me to bring the investors, bring the technology. We had a core team working and we were going to put everything together.”
However, Phillips decided that he would not start works until the City Council amended some of its by-laws. Until this was done, the understanding between the parties was that Phillips’s contract remained valid and would continue as soon as possible. “Everybody in the City Council knows I have this contract. We did a lot of work on it. There is no violation on my part of the contract nor was there any on their part. The simple thing was for us to meet, get the by-laws passed, and get the government to give them the go-ahead.”
After the general elections in 2015, Phillips began engaging the Town Clerk who said that as soon as he got into office they would start working on the project.
“In November 2015, someone from the media called me and told me that the contract was being handed to someone else who has political connections. I am shocked. The name of the person they are giving the contract to is Kamau Cush. I told Cush I have this contract and that we would have years of litigation and that nothing is going to happen. Why go after something that I already have? He bluntly told me I am a small fish and that he has lots of political and judicial connections in this country and that he is going to get this. His business partner or his consultant here is Bobby Vieira. I emailed Bobby Vieira every piece of paper work that I have on parking and I told him that I have this contract.”
Phillips is hoping that good sense will prevail and that the M&CC will acknowledge that what they are doing is wrong. “I have invested a lot of time and money in relation to parking. I have some lawyers and whatever they advise, I will do. But this borderlines corruption and nepotism.”