Dear Editor
The Mayor and Councillors have noticed with much trepidation, utterances about the Parking Meter project, in certain sections of the media, attributed to the leader of the People’s Progressive Party, which seek to suggest that the Parking Meter project is a People’s National Congress Reform Project. This is an absurdity and an attempt to add a negative political dimension to what is clearly a city revenue earning and regulatory initiative.
It is public knowledge that this particular project was initiated by the Mayor and Councillors of the city of Georgetown since 1995, and that whatever may have been the missteps in its implementation, in substance, it is one, which is necessary and vital not only to the development but also the transformation of the city.
Being responsible for securing funding and financing its own projects, activities and interests for the good governance of the city, the council has been able to attract this investment to the tune of US$10M. It is the largest investment facilitated and managed by the Council for over fifty (50) years. Also, this project is part of a wider plan to reorganise, reorder and reshape the nation’s capital and to lift it to a plateau of excellence to compare with the great cities of the world.
However, it is the considered view of the Mayor and City Council that the utterances about this initiative being a political one is really a ruse by that political party to create space for political activism and to redirect public focus and thinking from the benefits and advantages of the project to the city to the sort of “small minded” politics that kept the city in the doldrums of environmental and economic degradation for more than two decades.
However, the Mayor and City Council wishes to assure all stakeholders and its citizens that it is unswervingly committed to delivering a green, clean, healthy, safe and prosperous city for all Guyanese. The Council is pleased that at this particular point in the history of Guyana and the city it is poised to make a substantive contribution to the growth of local neighbourhoods and the sustainable development of the capital city of Guyana.
Royston King
Town Clerk
City of Georgetown, Guyana