— cries Georgetown mayor

MAYOR Patricia Chase-Green on Tuesday declared that the City is in a garbage crisis and head of Solid Waste Management, Walter Narine, was not presenting her with an accurate description of the situation on the ground.

“The garbage is killing me. Narine can’t tell me there’s a red carpet out there. There is garbage everywhere. We are in a crisis. He is not directing me right,” Chase-Green lamented at Tuesday’s extraordinary statutory meeting at City Hall.

Chase-Green said Narine reports one thing to the City Council but a different situation exists in the City. “I gotta get it under control. Christmas coming. I going to government to beg for this bailout to bring this City back in order,” the mayor said.

Her ‘begging’ comment came in response to Town Clerk Royston King’s statement at the meeting when he said depending on a government bailout dilutes the authority and autonomy of the City Council. The mayor begged to differ.

Chairman of the Finance Committee, Councillor Oscar Clarke, proposed that a one-month amnesty be granted for defaulting ratepayers so that some revenue can be garnered.

The proposal was supported by the majority of councillors present, and hence, a 100 per cent amnesty on interest was approved for the period November 15 to December 15, 2017.

The mayor noted that the amnesty is needed as the municipality is in crisis mode. She observed that the Council’s revenue base has not been able to adequately look after the Council since from as far back as 1992 when the PPP came to power.

Speaking about Deputy Mayor Lionel Jaikaran’s move to persuade a delinquent taxpayer to come forward with $7M, although he had built up $19M in interest, Councillor Welton Clarke offered that although it was a good gesture, it was not necessarily a good example of how the Council ought to be run. “We have to be careful how we stamp our authority,” he noted.

TOTALLY AGAINST
Councillor James Samuels was totally against the granting of any amnesty and pointed out that the municipality ought to be run as a business.

“Let’s get down and do business,” he urged, while pointing out how the delinquent taxpayer in question made millions of dollars at the expense of other taxpayers.

Councillor Alfred Mentore supported the granting of an amnesty and proposed that the 100 per cent only apply to the first two weeks of the month. In this way, he reasoned that people will pour in to pay their rates and City Hall might even benefit from a bonus and Christmas social.

Mentore pointed out that an increase in rates and taxes, the re-evaluation of properties in the City, and a raise in stallholders’ rents, will have to be pursued as revenue-earning options.

Furthermore, the town clerk noted that the ticketing system for persons found littering has to be implemented and funds garnered from littering at the moment ought to be given to the City Council, as opposed to going into the Consolidated Fund.

Chase-Green recalled that the Guyana Lottery was the brainchild of the former Council, but is now one of government’s leading sources of income.

NO BENEFIT
The fund was stopped by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government, but was reinstated six months later at no benefit to the City Council. When individuals litter by throwing the tickets on the streets, the City Council gets nothing but is expected to clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Narine told the Chronicle that both Cevons and Puran Brothers are expected to come back on board before Christmas.

“Both of them are coming back, but not with the same luxuries that they had before. We will take back the markets from them and we are going to do high-producing areas like commercial, Albouystown, Charlestown.” These are the areas that produce the most garbage which results in great costs to the City, Narine explained.

But Cevons Waste Management, in a press release, has since claimed that the company has not been engaged by City Hall with regard to the resumption of garbage disposal, nor is it part of any understanding with regard to a time frame for such resumption.

“Accordingly, we state categorically that the assertion attributed to Mr. Walter Narine is entirely false. We make this clear only because we are concerned that the citizenry not be misled on the important issue of urban sanitation with all of its public health implications. That being said, our commitment to an efficient and effective garbage-collection regime in Georgetown and its environs remains undiminished,” the statement said.