DESPITE the modest response to the first set of scheduled public consultations on the parking meters project hosted by the Renegotiating Committee of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), consultations will continue to garner the views and suggestions of all stakeholders.
“We will be engaging more [with stakeholders] in the coming weeks,” Chairman of the Renegotiating Committee Malcolm Ferreira related to the Guyana Chronicle yesterday.
Currently, there is no definitive schedule highlighting which stakeholders the committee will be meeting with in the coming weeks and when exactly these consultations will be done. However, the chairman related that this information will be disseminated to the public “soon.”

On Tuesday, May 23, the committee met with representatives of the commercial sector in Georgetown and the well-known pressure group, the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM); on May 24, the committee met with a few taxi-drivers, mini-bus operators and operators of vehicles used for commercial purposes and on May 25, they met a few city residents.
Representatives of the commercial sector and the MAPM engaged in these consultations with much alacrity and reaffirmed their opposition to this project. These stakeholders expressed that they are not opposed to a parking system, but demanded a new, transparent and bona fide project.

Other stakeholders (taxi-drivers, mini-bus operators, operators of vehicles used for commercial purposes and city residents) did not engage with the committee with as much alacrity and thus impeded the progression of the consultations and the renegotiating committee. Thus, further consultations will be hosted at City Hall to engage these stakeholders.
At this point, Ferreira accounted that no decision had been made regarding the project. Additionally, according to Ferreira, at that point in the consultations, the committee was only striving to account for all views of the public. He affirmed that the views and suggestions garnered would aid the committee’s decision-making process.