— even though mayor said City in garbage crisis more than a week ago

ALTHOUGH Mayor Patricia Chase-Green had declared Georgetown is in a garbage crisis just over a week ago, City Hall’s two major garbage contractors are yet to be engaged.

“We’d love to start back our operations, but they have to show us some respect and engage us formally,” Manager at Puran Brothers Disposal Services, Kalesh Puran, told Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday.

Cevons Waste Management, the other contractor, has also rejected a statement from Solid Waste Director, Walter Narine, that the company will be back on board with the City Council before Christmas.

He too said that City Hall has not contacted his company.

City Hall Public Relations Officer, Debra Lewis, told reporters on Tuesday that the schedule for garbage collection remains once a week for households and once daily for businesses.

But garbage continues to pile up in the city, with residents paying the social rejects to collect and dispose of same.

“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,” the mayor lamented at a meeting last week.

On Tuesday, Deputy Town Clerk, Sharon Harry-Munroe, told reporters that City Hall is now tidying up arrangements as it relates to payments to the contractors.

“So we shouldn’t have a problem with payment to the contractors. However, Council is currently tidying up the garbage situation we are seeing around the place; pockets here and there. We know we have some difficulties with that but we are addressing it as we speak. We are experiencing some difficulties with household garbage and we are working overtime where we are mopping up those areas,” she said.

Harry-Munroe conceded that the contractors have not yet been engaged.

“We will have to engage them first; we have not done so. I don’t know when they will be paid. What I do know is that the Government is working out the modalities for payment. What we do know is that it was approved and they are working out the modalities.”

Harry-Munroe does not know if the Government will be paying the contractors directly or whether the money would be going to the City Council first.