–APNU Councillor says company must ‘bow’ to new re-negotiating team

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Councillor, Ivelaw Henry, on Thursday waded into SMART City Solutions (SCS), contending that the parking meter company has pushed it a little bit too far.

“SMART City Solutions (SCS) eyes pass this Council! They eyes pass the people of Guyana! Some of the figures we see in the project document [are] abominable!” Henry said at a forum for City Councillors to air their views on the report recently submitted by the Parking Meter Negotiation Committee.

He said SCS must be made to “bow” to the new committee that will be appointed shortly to re-start the negotiation process.

The salaries of $1M and $750,000 that SCS said it plans to pay some of its officials are repulsive, Henry said, noting that the City Council should seek to undertake the project on its own.

“I would have liked us to do this project ourselves. Our people could be employed in this. And, it is no longer a contractual arrangement where they are above us and we are below, like boy and father; we are equal partners in this project. That is the way we are going to negotiate with them,” he said.

Thirteen of the 25 councillors 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 SCS, the foreign company that the City Council 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 councillors who called for a complete revocation of it.
Others have suggested a wait on the outcome of a court case that has a bearing on the matter.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, along with Councillors Heston Bostwick, Carolyn Caesar, Noelle Chow-Chee, Oscar Clarke, Welton Clarke, Yvonne Ferguson, Junior Garrett, Winston Harding, Ivelaw Henry, Trichria Richards, James Samuels and Monica Thomas voted in favour of continuing to negotiate with SCS under different conditions and with a new re-negotiating team.

Councillors Gregory Fraser, Bishram Kuppen, Lionel Jaikarran, Sherod Duncan, and Khame Sharma voted for a complete revocation of the contract with SCS, while Councillors Philip Smith, Carlyle Goring, Malcolm Ferreira, Andrea Marks, Alfred Mentore, Akeem Peter and Sophia Whyte voted for M&CC to await the court’s determination on the matter before deciding on the way forward.

Ultimately, some reasoned, the M&CC will have to go with the decision of the court regardless of what the Council decides now. The majority, nevertheless, voted in favour of re-negotiating with SCS under new conditions. For instance, SCS will now be obligated to provide required documents during the negotiations.

EXTENSION

Following the majority vote at City Hall, Town Clerk, Royston King will now be writing to Communities Minister, Ronald Bulkan, seeking an extension of the holding of the parking meters to facilitate the setting up of the other committee.

The mayor has asked that councillors submit names of persons to serve on the new team by Monday, when the next statutory meeting will convene.
“Let us take our time and move this process through. Nobody will push my buttons, Chase-Green said.

Councillor Peter offered that the City Council is bounded by the contract it has with SCS, and hence should continue to entertain the foreign company, but only according to the new provisions made for doing so in the ‘Ferreira report.’

“It gives us an opportunity to legally hold up our end of the bargain. This recommendation (to continue engaging SCS via a new renegotiating team) doesn’t allow for the continuation of the contract in its present form. In entertaining them, the committee should have ultimatums that if documents are not submitted, we squash the contract immediately.”

Peter observed that refusing to provide documents mean SCS is hiding information from the M&CC. “But because we are bounded legally, we ought to entertain them.”

A SHAM

Alliance For Change (AFC) Councillor, Duncan is not opposed to the idea of parking meters being installed in the City, but to them being delivered by SCS, whom he repeatedly referred to as a “sham of a company”.

“There isn’t any company by the name of ‘Smart City’ anywhere in the world. It’s a sham. The documents show us the company has two directors and within the last year, they fired one and the substantial director is involved in a court matter where he allegedly shot a child in the USA,” Duncan pointed out.

Duncan questioned the point of continuing to do business with SCS if it denied the very committee that City Hall installed pivotal documents.

“How can we contract with them further? If as a councillor in the City of Georgetown a year and a half later I do not have sufficient information, it’s an indictment on the Council. SCS has not been respectful to us and I have no intention of being respectful to SCS. No intention of doing that.”

While SCS was touted to M&CC as a company having years of experience in the business, Duncan argued that nothing they have done to date proves such.

“No company with years of experience… would put parking meters in front of secondary schools; that is not smart. In the middle of the pavement; that cannot be smart. SCS put a parking meter in front of Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre. What is smart about that?”
Based on his findings in Mexico, while on a trip the government sent him on, Duncan said an efficient public transport system and cycling were among the first options available for reducing congestion in the City. Conversely, he observed that the installation of parking meters in Georgetown was proposed as the first option to reduce traffic congestion.

Councillor Oscar Clarke offered that the M&CC cannot continue to permit the lawlessness occurring on the streets with regard to vehicular traffic.

If the metered system is put in place, he feels that persons who do not absolutely need to drive will leave their vehicles at home and opt to take a bus or taxi.

“Other countries use trains and other means to get to work. We want to restrict them if they do not need to come into the City.”

Clarke is saying it is not a question of whether anyone wants the contract or not.

“There’s a contract in place so it’s not whether you want it or not; it’s legal and binding.”

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Councillor, Kuppen offered that no one in their right mind would give away so much to SCS for so little in return.

“The company is taking advantage of this City. This is not the best we can do for the citizens of Georgetown. This contract is an illegal, unproductive contract that violates every single good business procedure. We must scrap it. We don’t need this. We can go to another contract. If you open this up to the public, you will have a lot of investors coming in, overseas and local. It doesn’t do justice to our people,” Kuppen said.

For those councillors who feel that the M&CC is bounded by the contract with SCS, Kuppen pointed out that Central Government did offer a way out of it.

Kuppen’s fellow PPP Councillor, Sharma offered that during the time that the parking meters were in effect, Georgetown was nothing but a ‘ghost town’.

“People would see me all over and ask ‘You mean that thing coming back?’” Sharma said.

Councillor Mentore clarified that it was not the M&CC that signed a contract with SCS but that Town Clerk Royston King did.

“The contract that currently exists should be revoked. If the meters are necessary, I would like to see us having a better deal. I would like to see us having 80 percent of that deal and the other side 20 per cent,” he said.