THE Guyana Government has once again decided to step in and assist the cash-strapped Mayor and City Council (M&CC) to honour its obligations to its two main garbage contractors. As such, this support will allow for 70 percent of the debts being paid.

Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan told the Guyana Chronicle on Friday that he met with a team from City Hall on Thursday, along with the two principal solid waste contractors, Puran Brothers Disposal Services, and Cevons Waste Management Inc.

“This resulted from a request by the Georgetown Council to assist with arrears owed for services. The central government, mindful of the challenges faced by the city in discharging its obligations and of the particular status of it being the capital, decided to once again step in and provide support,” Bulkan expressed.

The support will allow for approximately 70 percent of the debts being paid, following availability in January of 2019 allocations.
According to the minister, the contractors have advised that they were prepared to resume services immediately.

“The central government remains very concerned over the many issues raised in the recently concluded commission of inquiry and will continue to monitor the workings of this council to raise its performance level,” Bulkan said, adding that government is also mindful of not saddling the new council with onerous liabilities.
“It is against the foregoing that the government has approved a contract valued $320M to allow for mass property valuations. This will greatly enhance the revenue base of LDOs countrywide, given that rates on properties are the principal revenue tool for local authorities,” Bulkan pointed out.

Manager at Puran’s, Kaleshwar Puran, told the Chronicle on Friday that due to the minister’s undertaking, his company is willing to resume its operations as soon as possible, but will have to wait on the greenlight from the City Council.

In a joint statement to the press, the contractors said the meeting held with Bulkan was amicable and constructive. “It yielded what we believe to be credible assurances that settlement of the outstanding debt will commence very shortly. Our understanding is that the first payment will be made before the end of 2018. We have, without prejudice, accepted those assurances.”

The contractors said they remain mindful of the manifest inconvenience which citizens of the capital and its environs have had to endure. “Our goal is to restore a condition of normalcy in the shortest possible time. This decision has been taken in good faith and [is] consistent with our commitment to contributing to the welfare of the capital and its environs.”

Following the pull out by the contractors in November, City Hall hired a number of smaller contractors whom they said would have been able to continue collection according to the regular schedule in place. However, not all of the areas could benefit from garbage collection as per normal.

The City Council has however been making an effort to provide clearance to the communities at least once per week. This meant that once residents did not receive collection on the scheduled day, they would need to keep putting out their barrels each day until the trucks arrived.

Both contractors wrote to the M&CC recently, stating that it was not that they want to stop working, but their current financial positions could not permit them to continue working without pay.
The contractors have not been paid since last June and even though the M&CC announced that it was going to make a part payment some time ago, none has since been forthcoming.
Representatives of both companies said last month that they were frustrated by the M&CC’s inability to make timely payments to them.
The contractors had opted to pull their services in August 2017 when the City Council had racked up more than $400M in debts 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 that year.
During that time, the contractors had anticipated that the City Council would have made some effort to contact them on a new system beginning in 2018.