Georgetown faces possibility of garbage situation getting worse
THE garbage situation in Georgetown, already out of the City Council’s control, is likely to get worse as one of the contractors employed to dispose of the waste, Puran Brothers Disposal Service, yesterday indicated its intention to withdraw its services from next week should outstanding payments to the company not be made. City Treasurer, Andrew Meredith, at the council’s statutory meeting last week, had disclosed that the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) owes a total of $48M to Puran Brothers, Cevons Waste Management Inc. and other smaller contractors.
Those contractors had, in the not too distant past, unanimously decided to strike when the Council failed to meet its financial obligations to them, and now they have not been paid since October.
A representative of Puran Brothers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday that the company cannot continue working without payment.
He said the company worked hard during the holiday season, including on Christmas Day, when unlike any other garbage collector, his company worked its employees and trucks until after 15:00 hrs.
The M&CC had assured Puran Brothers that it would pay some of the debt by last week but did not and, according to the spokesman, calls to the Solid Waste Department, the Town Clerk’s Office and the City Treasurer’s went unanswered.
He said strike action is the only resort in an effort to have the municipality pays up. “This is not a nice start for the New Year. We don’t like doing that,” he said, adding that, though such action may be necessary, the company is thinking about what will happen to the city environment.
Meanwhile, a senior official at City Hall, who also did not want to be named, told this newspaper that the Council only owes contractors for two months.
He said it was the intention of the relevant department to pay the contractors through various measures that were put in place but those efforts did not materialise.

UNAVAILABLE
Apart from the delay, he said, when the municipality finally garnered the financial resources, two signatories to the cheques were unavailable. One of them, Deputy Mayor Robert Williams is sick in hospital and the other was overseas.
The official maintained that the situation is not so dire and, “if all goes well, the contractors should get something by weekend.”
Mismanagement of funds at City Hall has long been an issue affecting every single service offered by the municipality and, based on the ‘Burrowes’ report that was commissioned by former Minister of Local Government, Kellawan Lall, two senior officers, City Treasurer Roderick Edinboro and Town Clerk Beulah Williams were sent home.
Last week, calls were made by several city councillors to have present Treasurer Meredith and Town Clerk Pluck dismissed or suspended, on the allegation that they authorised the use of Council’s funds to pay a Christmas incentive to certain employees without permission from the relevant authorities.
It was alleged that Meredith paid the money to staff within his department but did not pay salaries to about ten drainage and irrigation workers before Christmas.  
At that statutory meeting, fingers were also pointed to Deputy Mayor Williams, who was said to have signed vouchers from his hospital bed and he was replaced, as Chairman of the Finance Committee, by Councillor Junior Garrett.