“GARBAGE is killing me,” a statement by the Mayor of Georgetown, Her Worship, Madame Patricia Chase-Green; and a protest by workers from the city municipality, protesting on the pavement outside City Hall, about late payment of their salaries.
This signals that the Mayor & City Council is in very deep financial crises, and not for the first time.

This has now become perennial, apart from other problems of an administrative nature which we are of the opinion, can only be addressed by the Council.
We can appreciate criticisms with regard to the problem of the garbage threat, since it involves environmental issues, although some of the criticisms do not take into account the reasons why the M&CC cannot meet its obligations: paying its workers on time; and honouring its obligation to the garbage contractors, for the consistent, daily removal of garbage. It is non-payment of taxes.

There was even a letter published in the media which purported to warn central government about advancing monies to the Council for its debt to the two terminated contractors. So, from whom should Mayor Green and council seek help?
In a previous editorial, captioned “A better, cleaner, greener city,” it was stated… “it costs the city authorities huge sums to perform daily sanitation and other maintenance functions. The latter can only be possible if citizens, especially defaulters in the business community, pay their share of taxes.”

We add to this, other citizens as well. In fact, a recent report said some $5B is owed to the city. This must be another first in the CARICOM region. No city, in any other part of the world, would be able to honour its civic obligations to its citizens, with the kind of recalcitrance that has become the norm among our ratepayers and taxpayers in this city.

Umpteenth times the Council has granted amnesty to defaulters, with another one recently given; so many times have there been appeals to these persons to go to City Hall for payment plans to be facilitated, so as to allow for resumption of servicing the debts owed. Even this has not received the response as it should. The recent case of the Council accepting a debt payment of $7M, minus the interest of $19M, illustrates the grave challenges facing the M&CC.

Though we do not judge the reasons for such an accumulated debt, we are of the opinion that such a situation ought not to have been allowed by City Hall. Clearly, the defaulter ought to have been made to pay, even if it were a fraction of the interest as penalty. Here again, Council has lost money.

It is time that the M&CC ceases imploring citizens to pay debts which are lawfully due, for such talk is falling on deaf ears. We are of the view that it is deliberately ignored, particularly since many in the business category would have used the impasse that had existed between the previous council and the then PPP/C Government, as an excuse not to honour their due. For these are not debt sums that have been made overnight–they have been decades in the making. City Hall must begin to take firmer action now. There are laws that give it such a legal ground.