… Seven city councillors selected –to sit on re-negotiating team 

A PARTNERSHIP for National Unity (APNU) Councillor, Akeem Peter, will now head the new team selected to re-negotiate the contentious parking meter contract with Smart City Solutions (SCS), the foreign company that was granted concession to install parking meters in the City.  Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, along with a majority of city councillors, voted for APNU’s Councillor, Noelle Chow-Chee to be Vice-Chairman when the statutory meeting convened at City Hall on Monday.

Apart from Peter and Chow-Chee, the other members of the new re-negotiating committee are: Councillors Oscar Clarke, Jameel Rasul, James Samuels, Heston Bostwick, and Ivor Henry.People’s Progressive Party (PPP)’s Bishram Kuppen was chosen to sit on the committee by Councillor Bostwick, but he declined the nomination.

Town Clerk Royston King noted that he has since received about four names of members of the public who will also serve on the committee, among them an engineer, lawyer and accountant. These names will be circulated to councillors today, and a vote will be taken at a special meeting next Monday.  In an invited comment following the meeting, Peter told the Guyana Chronicle that the new team will be working to achieve “the most possible and suitable deal” for the citizens of Georgetown.

“One of the first things I would be doing is asking for much more external helpers as it relates to the accounting systems. Numbers would play a great role,” he said, adding that the working income of most of the workers in Georgetown and the affordability of parking meters on the ‘normal’ person will have to be studied.

“We will bring the human face back to the issue, because we understood that it wasn’t really about parking meters, but it was about the contract. We want to help people understand the process,” Peter offered.    Peter said along with a reduction in the cost to park, the team will also be looking at the spaces that were offered to SCS, such as those in front schools.

“Even though we began on a wrong foot, I view this as an opportunity now for us to realign ourselves along the right path and get a human face to parking meters. The submission of documents is not an option; it’s a necessity, a must do. Once those are submitted, I see us moving forward,” Peter said.

Meanwhile, Councillor Kuppen had objected to the town clerk serving on the new committee, citing the sensitive nature of the issue. “The town clerk should not be part of the negotiating committee, even sitting as an advisor,” Kuppen said.    “The initial problems that came from the contract came from the actions he took, in that the contract was never tendered; the transparency and impact studies were not done; and I think that he should have rightfully recused himself because he was not part of the previous negotiating committee,” he’d told the Guyana Chronicle.

He further opined that it is highly prejudicial that King will be part of a committee, where he would be able to influence its discussion or the direction that it takes.     At a special meeting last month, 13 of 25 councillors voted in favour of setting up a new committee to start a fresh process of negotiation with SCS.

The contract that the 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.

The majority, nevertheless, voted in favour of renegotiating with SCS under some new rules.

Member of the Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM), Don Singh had told this publication that the M&CC is going ahead with re-negotiating an illegal contract. “Now I don’t know how that works,” he’d said, adding: “We at MAPM are 100 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.

” Another member, Luana Falconer, said 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 okay?” she said.