THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is looking to procure two brand new garbage trucks with a portion of the $200M grant from the Ministry of Communities.
The Ministry has not yet handed over the money, but M&CC Public Relations Officer, Debra Lewis told Chronicle that $75M will go towards securing the new trucks.
The City Council has said time and again that it wants to be able to provide garbage collection and disposal services without having to depend heavily on contractors.  After its two main contractors, Purans Disposal Services and Cevons Waste Management, pulled their services last August, the M&CC had said that this new development ‘opened their eyes’ to the possibility of providing the same services competently on their own, so that money can be saved.

Just recently, the Government paid over the bulk of the money owed to Purans and Cevons following a bailout request from the municipality.
Communities Minister, Ronald Bulkan told Guyana Chronicle that in addition to granting the bailout, the Government through his Ministry and that of the Public Infrastructure Ministry embraced an “emergency short-term support” to re-engage the two contractors for services up to December 31.

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

At one point, trucks belonging to both M&CC and the private contractors were down at the same time. Collection days had been reduced and the Council started working with an irregular schedule.