THE original Motion to restore Georgetown to its glory days of yore was sponsored by the Opposition, having been introduced by APNU’s Volda Lawrence, and passed in the National Assembly last year.She had declared: “As an elected body, we have a mandate to restore the splendour of the ‘Garden City. Today, we must let our voices be jointly heard in support of this Motion titled ‘Restoration Georgetown’.
Well, the Government did not need to hear those voices, because the clamour for the restoration of Georgetown to its original splendour was being sounded within Cabinet for the PPP/Cs entire duration in office, and its many interventions — financial, with resource-provision and otherwise — have been testimony that its concern about the state of the city is paramount and sustained, because of the many variables causing distress to the national psyche that the state of Guyana’s former Garden City is impacting on the consciousness of both residents and visitors.
But all these interventions, except for some infrastructural projects such as constructing and/or rehabilitating roads and public buildings etc, have been filtered through the Mayor and City Council.
Bad decision! Because resources and funds dissipated and disappeared as soon as they were allocated, while the Mayor and chosen colleagues toured the world and lived in splendour, even as the state of the city and environs visibly deteriorated by the second, and City finances plunged further into subterranean levels, like the national exchequer pre-1992.
There was, at the maximum, scant accountabily, with the Burrowes Commission of Inquiry having actually discovered massive networks of fraudulent transactions spanning back to uncountable years, as did Ramon Gaskin.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan — known for his rectitude in language and his inclusionary politics, where he always reaches out to protagonists for joint initiatives in nation-building — once became so incensed with the constant gerrymandering in the M&CC that he was provoked into calling the City Councillors “A bunch of rascals.”
Guyana’s steady macro-developmental and economic fundamentals are not fortitudinous nor dependent on serendipity, but on the PPPs astute and prudent management of fiscal imperatives and dependent factors to upward mobility in the national development paradigm. So this money that the Opposition is fighting over like rabid dogs are not theirs by right of any decree, but the trust of people to be managed for the greater good of the nation. And the PPP/C Government has never yet failed the Guyanese people in the fulfillment of this mandate.
And that is the angst giving the joint Opposition nightmares: That the deliverables that are systematically sending living and lifestyles of the Guyanese people on an ever-upward trajectory are precipitated, enabled and facilitated by a PPP/C Government, whereas the PNC’s (AFC is practically a component of that political party) track record in government is of abysmal failure. APNU’s configuration, nevertheless, the PNC will always be judged accordingly by an ever-increasing disillusioned electorate who are recognising the fluff and venomous spittle that serves as leadership in the joint Opposition.
Since 1992, the PPP/C administration has been trying to clean up the Augean stables that was Guyana, post-PNC stewardship; but blocs, such as Georgetown and elsewhere, were still retained under that Party’s management, and they are a microcosm of Guyana under PNC rule. So, as happened in the country before 1992, those enclaves still remain like huge garbage piles, guzzling the nation’s resources and finances with nothing to show except, literally and figuratively, pits of garbage and dung-heaps.
Government has therefore budgeted in this year’s estimates of expenditure $1B for environmental clean-up, of which $500M has been allocated for the clean-up and restoration of Georgetown and its environs.
However, the national exchequer is not bottomless, so Government decided to bypass the “…bunch of rascals” and deal directly with the miasmic and other matters, which is what is driving the Opposition into a frenzy, because, regardless of the ‘green’ drive, the Greens are being sidelined in this new restorative initiative, with the expected consequences of invectives and accusations being hurled at Government by the parliamentary Opposition.
The Opposition’s Motion calls for the support of a number of stakeholders through the establishment of a committee consisting of MPs, the Mayor and City Council and the Ministries of Transport and Hydraulics and Local Government.
However, Local Government Minister, Norman Whittaker said that this did not take into account the lack of responsibility on the part of the agency overlooking the management of the city, which is the M&CC.
General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Mr. Clement Rohee, has urged the Government not to channel monies into the hands of the M&CC, as theirs is a fraudulent record of mismanagement.
The initiative, which will be executed under the theme, ‘Clean up my Country’, would be larger than two that were previously launched. Rohee, who is also Minister of Home Affairs, declared that Georgetown “has become a ‘Garbage City’ as the Mayor continues to mismanage the Council, and gobble up the city’s resources.”
He added that the PPP wishes to discourage the Government from putting the $500M budgeted for the city in the hands of the Mayor and his Council, especially “…in view of their sordid fraudulent record of mismanagement and unaccountability at City Hall.”
He urged the Government to engage civil society to find ways and means of addressing the solid waste crisis in Georgetown. He also admonished Mayor Hamilton Green and Deputy Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green to learn invaluable lessons on how to manage and run an effective local democratic organ from other PPP/C-administered municipalities, as well as the wider Caribbean, and posited that with the absence of the M&CC, the Government will seek to source labour from public or even private institutions, or even seek a collaborative effort from the two.
Green is on record as saying that he saw no need for the money, as not only is it unnecessary, but that the figure seems more like an election campaign being launched by the Government ahead of the local government elections. Laughably, however, he subsequently claimed that the $500M is only “a drop in the ocean” since much more will be needed to address the works to be done.
Parroting Green, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) front-bencher, Ronald Bulkan, during the budget debate, denounced the Government’s proposed funding of a national clean-up initiative, claiming that it was a gambit in an elections campaign.
Minister Rohee had accused Mayor Hamilton Green of being hungry for media attention in an effort to remain relevant and regain his rank within the People’s National Congress (PNC), and that he continues to play dirty politics as opposed to serving the interests of the residents of Georgetown.
But this is a normal ploy of the PNC; to opportunistically change position to gratify supporters for political expediency.