– but no increases yet in container fees

THE Private Sector Commission (PSC) continues to be opposed to an increase in container fees, and a meeting held after many months to bring closure to the issue has failed to move the process forward in favour of the City Council.

The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) wants the fees to be increased from $5000 per container to at least $8,000 for a 20-foot container, and $10,000 for those that are either 40 or 45 feet in length.

The City Council has been complaining that the containers continue to severely damage city roads, leaving the municipality to foot the bill to have them repaired.
In an invited comment on Friday, Mayor Patricia Chase-Green told the Guyana Chronicle that other issues were raised when the tripartite committee met a few days ago to iron out the issue.

Another meeting has been fixed for some time in July, but in the meantime, more documentation from all sides has been requested.

Chase-Green, Town Clerk Royston King, and Chairman of the Finance Committee Oscar Clarke met with a team from the PSC, including its chairman, lawyers and other relevant authorities. Business Minister Dominic Gaskin and a representative of the Communities Ministry also sat in on the meeting.

After complaining on more than one occasion that the PSC was stalling the process, the mayor said she was relieved that a meeting was finally fixed.
The $5000 per container was agreed to be paid in the interim before a decision could be taken by the tripartite committee, but approximately two years have gone by without any movement.

“The private sector has no intention of meeting with us, in my opinion,” she said, adding that the Commission keeps requesting meetings on dates they know are days on which statutory meetings are held.

“The private sector is not interested in meeting with this council or moving it forward in any way; two years now and the issue cannot be resolved. We’ve only been writing and writing and writing,” the mayor said, adding:

“Why is it that this council has to bend to the private sector each time? We started discussions on the issue, and suddenly it went off the road. But we must not hold much longer, because we’re continuing to see the deterioration of our roads.”
Big business owners are also continuing to take advantage of the city council, Chase-Green observed, and thus closure ought to be brought to the matter.

The mayor had also touched on the issue of huge fuel-laden bush trucks being parked in front of people’s premises. According to her, the city council should no longer allow these bush trucks to pass Agricola and enter Georgetown because of the amount of damage they are causing to city streets.

Councillor Malcolm Ferreira had said: “People have to understand that a penalty is a penalty; it’s nothing you can just pick up US $12 or US $50 and pay off. They (businesses) could put it (their containers) on the road for 10 days and pull out $25,000 out their pocket easy, because they have $50M worth in the container.”

City Hall had decided to implement a $25,000 container fee, but this attracted much flak from members of the business community and the PSC.