OLD Kai has grown tired of waiting on APNU to tell us what happened to their much vaunted cleanup campaign of the City. However, you can expect a bag bigger than Santa’s with all the goodies and larger than life promises from this very APNU to citizens of Georgetown, when Local Government elections come around.If it has not dawned upon you that the leadership of City Hall has failed Georgetown under the GGG/PNC/R1G and now APNU, let us simply assess just what has transpired in our Capital City over the past decade. All around us, signs of change are cropping up almost overnight. The entire landscape of Georgetown is undergoing a rapid transformation with investments in businesses being at the highest they have ever been in our Capital’s history.
Major international businesses have also sensed that something positive is happening in Guyana and they are also coming to our shores as best exemplified by the recent opening of the American Store, which received wide publicity in the media. Just why did this Trinidadian based business decided to forsake other markets in the Caribbean and come to Guyana to invest its money at this point in time? They had to have seen potential as no serious investor doles out their finances without looking at the current and future prospects of a country.
While this is occurring, our leaders at City Hall are still stuck in a time warp, in their own cocoon; closing their eyes and pretending that progress is just a bad dream, that it is not possible. After all, they took the most progressive Caribbean economy in 1964 and bankrupted it by the time they demitted office in 92. There has been no leadership, just a heavy reliance on excuses and passing the buck to someone else, usually Central Government to distract from one’s own failings.
Responsible and dynamic leadership would have sought to engage these businesses and concretize deals for them to play a role in enhancement campaigns, in provision of their skills, resources and other services in strategic areas of our city that will best maximize their output. Greater emphasis would have been placed on collecting rates and taxes and then ensuring that Citizens start seeing their taxes at work.
What we have instead is a Mayor who is constantly on overseas tours, in some cases completely or partly funded by the very cash strapped City Council but before he tried to explain this reality away, we should also remember that while he is overseas, his salary is still being paid by the very taxpayers who are expecting results not excuses from his Highness.
It would be interesting to also know in what way if any has the City benefited from these ‘official’ overseas trips. We know for instance when the Head of State goes on an overseas trip; he would ink several agreements and procure benefits for the nation. What has his Highness done for the past two decades of travelling at the expense of taxpayers?
But that is just part of the reality, a good example of the squandering of taxpayers resources by City Hall in very dubious circumstances is best exemplified by a ground and building constructed by the M&CC on Woolford Avenue, sandwiched between the North Georgetown Secondary School and Ghandi Youth Organization.
Were there any public tenders? How much money was spent on the building and ground? And, who authorized this expenditure?
The site is there for all to see in its unused and decaying state.
Even after they would have hypothetically recognized that the facility was a bad investment and waste of Council’s resources, surely it does not take a rocket scientist to lease the facility to a private company and bring in additional financial resources to City Hall.
But this simple reasoning has clearly missed all the ‘highly qualified’ people who currently sit on the opposition benches in their majority at City Hall. In the meantime, if an ‘unqualified’ woman within a matter of months on the job could have detected that no less than the Mayor of Georgetown and a close relative owed the City millions in taxes for a number of years, while at the same time His Highness ‘lectured the Citizens of Georgetown on their civic duty to pay up their rates and taxes,’ then I say we need more people like Carol Sooba in City Hall.
With all his denials, protestations and public attacks on Sooba, we are told that Mr. Green quietly paid his outstanding taxes. If such a glaring act of misconduct escaped the attention of the APNU controlled City Council for such a long period, what else they have conveniently turned a blind eye to while the people in Georgetown continue to be affected?
Old Kai is hardly ever surprised with the passing of so much time and experience but I have to admit, that if His Highness and merry band of Councilors decide to change course and work in earnest with the new Town Clerk to correct the internal deficiencies which will lead to a greater service output, then I would not only be surprised but humbled.