LAMENTING the failure of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) to do its part in providing the services required of it, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) has threatened to cease making interventions when the municipality finds itself in ‘hot water’, as it does over and over again. “We want to stop making interventions in the City Council,” Chairman of the PSC, Ramesh Dookhoo, emphatically said yesterday at a news conference.
Speaking at his Waterloo Street, Georgetown office, Dookhoo said it is not the PSC’s responsibility to offer assistance to the cash-strapped municipality, except to pay its taxes.
“The City Council’s responsibility is to give me something in return,” the chairman said, as he disclosed how the PSC spoke with all of the political parties that are “fighting for office” on the need to make a commitment to local government elections.
“And it seems as though we have a commitment. We need to put things back into perspective in the city. We need to let the role players, the actors, play the role for which they have been elected…,” Dookhoo offered.
President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Komal Ramnauth, said the government has been lobbied for more than two years now on the need for local government elections to be held.
Ramnauth observed that the business community is suffering because those elections have not been held.
When garbage collectors ceased working in the city recently, Ramnauth recalled, it was the private sector that recruited and loaned the M&CC 12 trucks to pick up garbage for two or three weeks.
“And we cannot continue to do that. We pay our taxes and we expect the city to function and to give the services that are needed to business people.”
Ramnauth said the council has a way of disclosing that businesses owe taxes when, in fact, upon request, the municipality has failed to submit a correct list of all those with outstanding amounts. “So it’s not that the people don’t want to pay their taxes; people want services when they are paying taxes.”
The council has recently blamed city store owners for the large build-up of garbage at several locations.
Deputy Chief Constable Trevor Merriman recently told the Chronicle that officers of the council would usually pick up garbage in front of the stores between 14:00hrs and 16:00hrs. The garbage dilemma arises when stores open beyond 16:00hrs and choose ‘junkies’ to remove their garbage, taking it all over the place.
“Store owners are culpable, and must desist (from this practise). They should keep their garbage in their store if they want to open late,” Merriman advised, adding that six or seven of them have been dealt with by the law since the establishment of the anti-littering campaign last October.
Many others could have been taken to court if the junkies had not taken the blame, Merriman pointed out.
According to him, the council has found that many persons caught littering are working for businesses, and have been mandated by the owners to illegally dump their litter.
Merriman appealed to business owners to use the system that the council has in place, as there will be “no excuses, no pardons” for persons caught littering.
He said the council “is still hoping that one day” authorities will see the need for the council to have its own Municipal Court, so that the Magistrate’s Court does not have to be burdened with littering cases.
Littering has long been an issue for the City Council. Officials described it some years ago as “the single most challenging” problem plaguing the municipality.