– companies contemplating strike action

MAJOR sanitation companies, Cevons Waste Management Services and Puran Brothers Disposal Inc. are once again faced with a financial dilemma because the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has arrears of $148 million for the companies.

Similar to what has occurred in many instances, the municipality is yet to pay the companies for the services rendered to the city. Approximately $75 million is owed to Cevons and $73 to Purans.

Representatives of both companies said they are frustrated by the inability of the M&CC to make timely payments to the company.

“They owe us $75M from May 2018 to now…we are in negotiations with the city but we have not done anything concrete as yet but we are still trying to get something done,” said Business Development Officer of Cevons, Morris Archer in an invited comment on Monday.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cevons, Morse Archer, in a follow up to what was said by his colleague, noted that the company cannot continue to work without being paid because at some point they will have to stop.

“We are at a close breaking point… we had a meeting with the City Council and they promised to meet again to discuss payments but it is annoying and frustrating, it is a consistent cycle,” said Morse.

General Manager of Purans, Kaleshwar Puran echoed the sentiments of Archer, noting that his company has not been paid since June this year.

“The nonpayment is affecting our working capital but we have not made a definitive decision as yet as to the way forward,” said Puran.
He, however, said that the payments from City Hall usually sum up to 75-80 per cent of the company’s revenue and they have been working under the conditions of the same contract for about three years.
Despite attempts to maintain the professionalism with the M&CC, the companies are in frustration and might even resort to striking.
“We have not said that we will strike but we are contemplating it,” said Puran, explaining that in the past they had put faith and investment into the system, with the hope that the situation would improve.

A letter has been sent to the Ministry of Communities, informing them about the situation.
The contractors had opted to pull their services in August 2017 when the city council had racked up more than $400M in debt to the two companies.
Although the companies had agreed to wait for payments for the years 2015 and 2016, the municipality was not even keeping up with its current balances for 2017.
Government stepped in and paid the contractors all of the outstanding balances and even went further to create a special arrangement to cover services up to the end of the year.
During that time, the contractors had anticipated that the City Council would make some effort to contact them on a new system beginning 2018. But no such contact was made.