By Telesha Ramnarine

THE Guyanese people are being ‘tricked’ into believing that they will pay a mere $125 to park for an hour in the city, when in effect they will be paying $500 per hour.

This was explained by Chief Executive Officer of Astrolobe Technology Incorporated, Mr Saratu Phillips, who met with City Hall officials last Wednesday to discuss a contract that the City Council had given him in 2007 to set up a structured parking system in Georgetown.

Phillips was shocked recently to learn that, even in view of his contract, which is valid for 25 years, City Hall has given a parking meter contract to another company, called National Parking Systems.

The public is being told that citizens will pay a mere $125 per rotation, but it is not being explained that a rotation means 15 minutes. Instead, the idea that is being propelled is that a rotation equals one hour.

“They are saying $125 per rotation. That’s a sneaky marketing, conning the Guyanese people. Really and truly, a rotation is 15 minutes; so, for one hour, they would be paying $500 an hour. It’s only by reading the fine print that you come to understand this,” Phillips pointed out.

Phillips is saying that if City Hall gone ahead with the contract it had made with his company, citizens would just be paying $120 per hour to park.

“His (the new company) system is going to cost US$10M, and the Guyanese citizen is going to pay $500 to park for an hour. My system is going to cost US$350,000 and people will pay only $120 per hour to park,” Phillips told the Guyana Chronicle.

Phillips is not interested in setting up parking meters in Georgetown, but he is of the view that designing an application whereby citizens can pay to park by means of an ‘app’ on their cellphone would be simpler and cheaper.

OLD RELICS

“Parking meters are old relics. People are trying to get rid of this. In this age of so many applications, it’s easier and cheaper to (set up an app on their cellphones), as opposed to going to dig up the grounds of Guyana to put in 400 parking meters that will charge you $500. This economy can’t afford $500 an hour!” Phillips contends.

Phillips was told that his system is too advanced for Guyana. “I mean: are we all dumb people that we don’t know how to operate an application?” he asked.

Phillips says that using the system he has in mind would be similar to using the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph’s (GT&T) means of buying a data plan, or checking a credit balance.

“You simply enter your car number, press how (many) hours you want, and a text message will confirm that you have paid,” Phillips explained.

“Apparently, none of them has read my plan,” he challenged. “What I am doing is I am connecting with two companies, and we are implementing a system: park by application. That’s where the future is going. There’s an application for everything, so why would we spend US$10M to install 400 parking meters that US$350,000 could do by means of an application and partnership with GT&T and Digicel and all these other multimedia companies?

“All these things can be done in Guyana. There are many application builders in Guyana, of which I have already partnered with two of them that we could build an application, connect it to GT&T and Digicel, and pay to park via your cellphone. That is the most convenient way to do it,” he insists.

Meanwhile, present at last Wednesday’s meeting were Mayor Patricia Chase-Green; Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan; Town Clerk Royston King; Chairman of the Finance Committee, Oscar Clarke; Councillors Junior Garrett and Alfred Mentore; Treasurer Ron McAlmont, and Public Relations Officer Debra Lewis.

COMBATIVE ATTITUDE

“They called the meeting for me to tell them what my plans are to execute this contract, even though they had it in paperwork for the last nine years. The questions they asked were all archaic, relic. To begin with, the officers came with a very combative attitude. They didn’t ask me any questions that were relevant from a technological, financial sphere, to see if I can execute this project,” Phillips expressed.

He said he is now thinking deeply about what his next move should be. “I am sleeping on what my next move is. I know in my mind that somebody needs to fight them, but I have gotten a lot of people calling me to tell me to be careful; so the game has gone up to another level: I not only have to think about my other business that I am running; I have to think about my safety.”

Phillips came to Guyana in 2006, and had put together a team of information technology professionals who were looking at transferring other technologies from the United States to Guyana.
From December 2006, Phillips and his team worked with the City Council until October 2007, when he obtained an exclusive contract to design the parking system.

“It was going to run the City Council close to US$2M to implement a simple parking system, and they didn’t have the funds at the time; so the idea was for me to bring the investors, bring the technology. We had a core team working, and we were going to put everything together.”

After the General Elections in 2015, Phillips began engaging Town Clerk Royston King, who said that as soon as he got into office they would start working on the project. In fact, Phillips said, King wrote him to affirm his knowledge that he (Phillips) had the contract.

“In November 2015, someone from the media called me and told me that the contract was being handed to someone else, who has political connections. I am shocked. The name of the person they are giving the contract to is (name provided). I told (him) I have this contract and that we would have years of litigation and that nothing is going to happen. Why go after something that I already have? He bluntly told me I am a small fish and that he has lots of political and judicial connections in this country, and that he is going to get this. His business partner or his consultant here is (person named). I emailed (that person) every piece of paper work that I have on parking, and I told him that I have this contract,” Phillips said, noting that his efforts to talk them out of the contract have been to no avail.