Dear Editor,

FROM the advent of the APNU+AFC Coalition, it would appear that the City Council has not been managed by all its elected officials, and governed by its statutory procedures.The name of Royston King keeps being repeated, each time through independent acts of hostility and aggression against citizens who need guidance, rather than spasms of egomania. The presumption has to cease that there is a ‘Republic of City Hall’, independent of the livelihood of those who trade in this town.

King may very well be the extension of a partisan group whose members, directly or indirectly, operate as ‘agents of the PPP at City Hall’. Through their actions, they are continuously creating public embarrassment, which by now ‘John Public’ has come to recognise as a character flaw of the Republic of City Hall.

Perhaps it’s time that both the Ministries of Business and Communities pay serious attention to this state within the state of Guyana.

This recent Alexander Street to Bourda Street onslaught was prompted by a legal complaint made by a certain Robb Street business against vendors’ untidiness. What is curious is what entitles this business to the jurisdiction of an entire economic block – Alexander St to Bourda St. It was at the insistence of another business that the stalls of the Bourda St. vendors were destroyed, again without legal procedures adhered to.

Addressing Stabroek Market Square was necessary, but its handling was undoubtedly disastrous. The fact is that because I am a self-employed small business operator, I can empathise with those vendors regarding the negative consequences that disruption of the flow of business can have on their fragile economies and on their health. Royston King and his compatriots at the ‘Republic’ are salaried employees and lack empathy with this reality. They are incapable of comprehending that things are very, very difficult for the small business economy today, and that for the last decade, Guyana has hardly had an economy.

This is where the Ministry of Business comes in — to direct the ‘Republic’ towards meaningful strategies. Why? Because it is likely that changes in the employment sector will lead to growth in the small farming population, and this will require more display and trading space. Already there are indications of serious problems concerning the dangerous premeditative contamination of fruits and vegetables for economic expediency. This will need expertise beyond the ‘Republic’s’ capacity to handle when the authorities in Agriculture do wake up or are awakened.

It is time to shed the small-minded predatory nature of the Republic of City Hall and get them to serve, rather than what they have become. I am wondering where the voices of the New councilors are.

Regards,
BARRINGTON BRAITHWAITE