— Chase-Green

WITH the exclusion of Puran Brothers Disposal Services for garbage collection in the City, former Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green, is contending that the new set of contractors are “personal choices” and that the selection process was unfair.
The Mayor and City Council, last January 13, issued a public notice to the effect that from February 1, Cevons Waste Management, Star Imports, and SANDIP Waste Management Services will be removing household and parapet waste, along with the Solid Waste Management Department.
Serving the City Council for over 35 years, Chase-Green noted that the company is well experienced in cleaning the City and that it is therefore strange that the City Council did not give this contractor at least one out of the 11 groups in the City.
“They bid and re-bid and all sorts of things happened. It’s so unfortunate and very sad. The nonsense that is taking place at the level of the City Council… only time will tell,” Chase-Green commented.

According to her, the smaller contractors who came to the rescue of the City Council in the past when the main contractors downed tools are not being given any work. In fact, Chase-Green said some of them called her to complain that they were not being invited to meetings like other contractors.
“It tells me that they are picking and choosing before doing the awarding. These are personal choices being made and the contracts were not fairly awarded. I have no apologies for saying this,” Chase-Green expressed, adding, “The Solid Waste Director (Walter Narine) loves to build castles in the air and sell you dreams and often they have to re-look at decisions made. Hopefully this time, we don’t have to re-look at this one.”
Meanwhile, Manager at Puran Brothers, Kalesh Puran, told the Guyana Chronicle this week that it was sad the City Council introduced new companies into the market after deciding not to give any more work to his company, even as it has been serving the municipality for over 35 years.

“I don’t know where we fell short; I really don’t know what’s going on in the council,” Puran expressed, as he noted how the council asked the company to lower its prices in the contract covering the next three years.
According to Puran, the council showed his company an engineer’s estimate that has figures lower than what the company is currently working with. “The cost for supplies doesn’t come down; workers’ pay doesn’t come down. It’s not just about paying workers and buying fuel for our trucks; there are many other support services that we have to fund.”
Puran said that although there has been no official correspondence with his company about the new developments, he has seen the public notice excluding his company. He mentioned that the council still owes his company more than $70M for the years 2019 and 2020.