PUBLIC Relations Officer of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC), Mr. Royston King, yesterday said that the municipality is unable to effect any substantial change to the severe flooding situation in the city. 

He attributed this mainly to the lack of proper coordination and cooperation between Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba and the Council. King was speaking to the Chronicle following a press conference called by Mayor Hamilton Green at his City Hall office.

King said the municipality is very worried that the flooding yesterday could spiral into several other things. “There are enormous implications for the environment.”
With respect to the municipal markets, he observed: “The overtopping experienced is affecting stallholders in municipal markets and we imagine that there will be millions of dollars in losses, particularly in goods that have been stored on the ground.”
The Mayor continued to lament the lack of financial resources at the municipality. He told reporters that no drainage work could have been carried out this year, so far, because of the lack of money.
Green said the City Council has no “intimate relationship” with the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) and that the Council’s budget for 2013 was a “fractured document” that ignored reality and failed to cater for major services such as drainage.
Furthermore, he said no drainage works could be completed because there were no trucks available to move the necessary stuff around. The acting Town Clerk had the trucks engaged elsewhere, he informed, and the Council could not benefit from the services of private trucks because Sooba refused to pay.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green predicted doom for the city, especially for the holiday season, when she informed reporters that Georgetown is in for a “very serious health crisis” and that the municipality is operating with a single garbage truck.
Addressing the issue of the ‘Christmas Garbage’, Chase-Green said the city is worse off than it ever was with an Acting Town Clerk that is adamant. “We cannot handle the garbage situation,” she declared.
According to Chase-Green, Sooba declared last Monday at the Council’s fortnightly statutory meeting that she will not spend any more money on garbage.
“We have never seen Georgetown in this state,” she said.
The problem has to do with adamant officers who are not setting the priorities of the Council right, Chase-Green observed. “She (Sooba) is saving money at the cost of the nation. She refuses to buy trucks while the garbage continues to pile up.”
Chase-Green said for the Christmas season, citizens will have to be competing with cockroaches, flies, rats, and mosquitoes as they traverse the roadways, along with several waterborne diseases.
She expressed hope that the government will soon see it fit to have a qualified town clerk installed.
But Sooba, when contacted yesterday, denied that she said anything of the sort at the last statutory meeting. And she also did not agree with the doom predicted because she said the Public Works Ministry loaned the municipality three trucks to assist with garbage disposal for the season.
Sooba also complained that the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and some councillors have consented to putting back itinerant vendors on the streets, thus, contributing to the piling up of garbage and the blocking up of drains.
Written By Telesha Ramnarine