Dear Editor
THE doggedness and explicit bullyism being displayed by some members of the Georgetown City Council as they seek to shove down the throats of Guyanese the purported benefits with regard to the renegotiation of the scandalous parking meter deal, clearly means one of two things: it is either those who are championing the return of the parking meters have an interest in its operations and therefore are duty-bound to see it up and running, or it means that they are just heartless, who could not care less of what the political, economic and legal consequences and fallout will be.

They are all aware that foisting what can only be described as a corrupt contract on the citizens of Georgetown is not only wrong, but is proscribed. Let me say from the very outset that most citizens recognise that space is precious in our capital city – and so is time for our drivers, so they do not oppose a modern, transparent and efficient parking system being implemented by the City Council; what they oppose is having it done by Smart City Solutions.

They challenge the legality and transparency of the arrangement and the credibility of the company with which the city has entered into the contract. From the outset, it should be noted that the previous Council never approved the imposition of the draconian parking meter project as was erroneously stated repeatedly by the administration, and therefore everything else that followed, including the renegotiation, was null and void and premised on a falsehood.

Secondly and very importantly, it must be noted that the parking meters fiasco has been mired in controversy from the inception. The tortuous journey began with the setting up of an opaque company going by the name National Parking Systems (NPS) sometime around 1995, which listed its address as 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, where the security and other officials in the building that NPS claimed as the address from which it rented office space, emphatically denied that National Parking Systems had an office there, leading to the first set of concerns by citizens.

Then we had NPS partnering with a company called Smart City Solutions (SCS) to install the parking system and there was again another controversy, as there seemed to be two Smart City Solutions, one with just two directors and registered locally and one which is owned by a Mexican group.

Evidently, no due diligence was done by the Council on these companies, as one of the original principals behind the deal had been jailed for four months in New York in 2002 and placed on five years’ probation for grand larceny in the third degree; whilst the other was convicted and then released from a US federal prison in 2007. The ‘Terrific Triumvirate’ which incorrectly believes installing parking meters is the legal right of the Council, and that they will be forcibly implemented, is in for a rude awakening, as until and unless the entire parking meter initiative is done over transparently and with reputable companies, it will go nowhere.

Regards
Mark Roopan