MINISTER of Communities, Ronald Bulkan said the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has formally requested assistance with clearing outstanding arrears, to Puran Brothers and Cevon’s Waste Management for garbage collection made over a period of time.

Bulkan explained that proposal was placed before the central government and is currently being considered. However, he noted that to date a decision has not yet been made. In light of this request being made by other municipalities and local government organs, Minister Bulkan explained that his Ministry has been lending support to those bodies over time.

“I think that one should not be unmindful of the fact that Georgetown is our capital city. It has a special status as the capital city and therefore the central government has a special obligation and responsibility to render support,” Minister Bulkan said. He added, “I would be surprised if one of our local governments says it feels discriminated against by this administration…because we have been providing considerable support, cooperation, and collaboration to our local government organs.”

In July, the two waste disposal companies withdrew their services from the M&CC after being owed in excess of $300 million for services rendered. City Councillors last Thursday night voted in favour of a motion moved by Mayor Patricia Chase-Green to ask central government for more than $400M to bail the municipality out of its debt to its two major garbage contractors. Town Clerk Royston King subsequently wrote to Minister Bulkan seeking exactly $475,635,245 that will be used to pay outstanding balances to Puran Brothers Disposal Services and Cevons Waste Management, which date back to 2015. The motion was seconded by Councillor Oscar Clarke and gained the support of some 20 councillors at an extraordinary statutory meeting at City Hall.

The contractors suspended their services since last August because the City Council was not keeping its side of the bargain to pay current amounts. The companies had agreed to wait for what was owing to them for 2015 and 2016. Ever since then, the Council hired three small-time contractors to work along with trucks belonging to the M&CC, but head of Solid Waste Management, Walter Narine told this publication on Friday that a number of setbacks were being encountered.

According to him, contractor trucks as well as Council trucks have all broken down, resulting in a further interruption to garbage collection across the city. Collection had already been reduced and the Council started working with an irregular schedule. There has been no collection in some quarters of the city for this week owing to the disruptions caused by the trucks.

But Narine said work should have been completed on the trucks and hence they would have been back in operation. Residents still had no collection.

Contacted for a comment, Minister Bulkan told the Guyana Chronicle that M&CC’s request will be taken to Cabinet so that it can be examined.

Meanwhile, the motion said the request was in keeping with the municipality’s efforts to honour its responsibility to local communities and to the city as a whole, to prevent the spread of diseases associated with poor municipal waste management and to secure the integrity of the environment and the public health of the city. The motion said in 2015, in anticipation of the nation’s Jubilee celebrations, the Council had embarked upon a massive clean-up campaign in all local communities and had exhausted all of its available funds in the that campaign. It continued that the request was also to encourage the contractors to resume their operations to support the Council in the provision of the vital municipal service of garbage collection and disposal.

Also in attendance at the meeting were Councillors Trichria Richards, Winston Harding, Welton Clarke, James Samuels, Malcolm Ferreira, Carolyn Caesar, Gregory Fraser, Alfred Mentore, Sophia Whyte, Yvonne Ferguson, Sherod Duncan, Noelle Chow-Chee, Jameel Rasul, Lyndon Hilliman, Heston Bostwick, Ivelaw Henry and Junior Garrett.