Dear Editor,
THERE is an old saying in Guyana ‘When yuh play out all yuh trump cards yuh gat to lose till game done’. The City Council is at it again.
The municipality’s workers have not been paid yet for November, and so only heaven knows when they will be paid for December to do their Christmas shopping, as it has been reported that their coffers are empty. This is the tune the old cow died on.

The two major garbage contractors have once again pulled their services after not being paid for months, racking up a huge bill, so the thrash is beginning to pile up all around the city, while the Council is fiddling around with some small contractors. Clearly, the strategy by the Council is to sit back and await another bail out by the central government, who will use hard-earned taxpayers money to rescue a hopeless city administration again, since the holidays are fast approaching and the capital cannot be left to become one big garbage heap, to greet our visitors.

The Stabroek Market area has become a hotspot zone for epic criminal activity on a daily basis, and what is the City Police doing about it? Well, the outgoing Mayor has announced that a security policing plan is in place for the Christmas season which will see a greater collaboration between the City Constabulary and the Guyana Police Force (GPF). What does this really mean? It means that the Constabulary, which is supposedly 140 members short, will continue to provide protection to the mayor, former mayors, the on-leave and on-the-job town clerks; will continue to keep its bike patrol unit out of sight, will continue to harass vendors whilst leaving all of the heavy lifting and crime fighting in the city to the national police, whilst they go around picking up their Christmas perks.

The citizens of our capital and workers of the Georgetown Municipality can only hope that Santa brings them a new mayor that travels less and cares more about resolving the problems plaguing the city, a town clerk that focuses less on giving out all of the municipal tasks to contractors without adherence to the national tender process, but rather more on equipping and giving back the tasks to their workers and, most importantly, the return of transparency and accountability to City Hall.

Regards
Roseanne Rodgers