THIRTEEN of 25 City councillors on Thursday voted in favour of setting up a new committee, possibly consisting now of members of the public, to start a fresh process of negotiation with Smart City Solutions (SCS), the foreign company that was granted a concession to install parking meters in Georgetown.

The contract that the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) entered into with SCS came under heavy criticism from some City councillors who called for a complete revocation of it, while some others suggested waiting on the outcome of a court case that has a bearing on the matter.
Ultimately, they reasoned, the M&CC will have to go with the decision of the court regardless of what the Council decides now on the way forward.

The majority nevertheless voted in favour of renegotiating with SCS under some new rules. For instance, SCS will now be obligated to provide required documents before any negotiations can take place.
But Councilor Malcolm Ferreira, who chaired the previous re-negotiation committee, says there is no guarantee that SCS will comply and provide the documents.

“I don’t think that there’s any guarantee that SCS will come up and push up. They had enough time to do that and they didn’t,” he told Guyana Chronicle following a City Hall meeting Thursday where councillors were allowed to air their views on the report he and his team submitted recently.

As it stands now, Town Clerk Royston King will have to write to Communities Minister, Ronald Bulkan, seeking an extension of the holding of the parking meters to facilitate the setting up of the other committee for renegotiation.

By Monday, when the next statutory meeting will convene, Mayor Patricia Chase-Green has asked that councillors submit names of persons to serve on the new team.
“Let us take our time and move this process through. Nobody will push my buttons.”
Member of the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM), Don Singh told this publication that the M&CC is going ahead with re-negotiating an illegal contract.

“Now I don’t know how that works. We at MAPM are one hundred per cent sure that the court case will justify our position that monopoly laws were broken, procurement laws were broken and the general contract is illegal. So they will be faced with further problems down the road by taking this action.”

Other member, Luana Falconer commented that it was shocking to see that it did not matter to 13 councillors that the contract with SCS is illegal.
“Where in the world is negotiating an illegal contract ok? These people are not thinking. This is madness. Everything about the whole process was wrong,” she said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Lionel Jaikaran offered during his presentation that the City Council must adhere to the rule of law.

“In May 2016, the Council was informed that the contract was signed for the implementation of parking meters. To my knowledge, at no time do I recall ever discussing, much less voting, on a proposal to implement this. I didn’t even see a contract until much later on.”

Jaikarran said the project lacked transparency from the beginning, was not open to public scrutiny and should be shelved immediately.
Alliance For Change (AFC) Councillor, Sherod Duncan, along with People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Councillors, Bishram Kuppen and Khame Sharma also called for the complete revocation of the contract with SCS.

In a rather stirring and animate delivery, Duncan repeatedly called SCS “a sham of a company” and referred to how it disrespected the committee that the M&CC tasked with renegotiating the contract, by not providing requested documents.

“SCS is a bad deal for the City. How can we continue to work with them? We cannot do business with them.”

Councillor Ferreira said the thought of resigning crossed his mind not because of his small stipend offered during the consultations or the hard work involved, but the fact that city councillors meet around the horse shoe table but cannot make a decision.
Although the town clerk said Ferreira’s committee overstepped its mandate and worked outside of its remit, Ferreira said he was very much prepared to defend his report.