By Telesha Ramnarine

GEORGETOWN Mayor Patricia Chase-Green related yesterday that most of the complaints she has received over the past week have to do with the treatment of the public by the City Engineer’s and City Treasurer’s Departments.
“Go and come, go and come, go and come,” is what customers are subjected to, without any consideration being paid to the time and cost that citizens have to expend, Chase-Green observed.

Speaking at a City Hall meeting organized by Town Clerk Royston King to formally introduce her, Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan and the new council to all heads of departments and workers of the Council, Mayor Chase-Green, in her short address, related that over the past week, the number one complaint she received through phone calls and letters, had to do with the manner in which persons are treated when they turn up at City Hall for business.

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“We have started a new page. We have got to do better than that,” she urged the officers.

Last month, at a ceremony to bid farewell to former Mayor Hamilton Green, Chase-Green had similarly complained about the behaviour of staff in the Treasurer’s Department.

“You come to the Treasurer’s Department, you’re told to come back tomorrow; come back the next day; oh, we ain’t get it yet; come back the next day. Nobody takes the time to ask if you have the passage to come back, or if you are going to be allowed time off to come back. Sometimes you come for your salary and you hear, ‘Oh come back’. They don’t know if you’ve got to take your sick child to the doctor with that money, and I am disturbed about that.”

She encouraged those present to never take personally any decision made by the council. “They are never personal, they will all be made in the best interest of the City.”

She also promised to look into any situation that causes discomfort to the officers, because if they are uncomfortable, they will not perform in the most efficient way. Something as simple as fixing their chair to make them more comfortable will be looked into, she said.

Deputy Mayor Duncan similarly commented that if the 800-plus officers of the council are equipped, the city will move forward.

“I didn’t come for my looks. I came to work,” Duncan told the gathering. He undertook to work hard, especially at the grassroots level.

Chairman of the Personnel and Training Committee, Oscar Clarke, urged the officers never to become demotivated on account of criticism. He reminded councillors that the correct way of dealing with any concern is first through the mayor and her deputy.

Clarke reminded the officers of the need to be polite and disciplined, and to interact with others in a way that would make them want to cooperate with the City Council.