– but one week on Cevon’s et al still waiting

FOLLOWING a meeting last Thursday with City Hall, it was agreed that Cevon’s and Puran Brothers would, in the immediate future, receive partial payment of the amounts owed to them for services provided during 2018.

The meeting was held with officials of Cevon’s and Puran Brothers and representatives of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), including the Chairman of the Finance Committee, the acting town clerk, and the city treasurer, as well as Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan.

The companies have said in a joint press statement that they said at the meeting that they were prepared to resume work immediately under the existing contract they have with the Georgetown municipality.

They, however, said that their resumption is subject to City Hall giving them the ‘green-light’, but while up to press time last night, no such go-ahead was forthcoming, they said they’re still on standby to resume work.

Noting that timeliness of payment has always been the issue with the M&CC, the companies said:
“We cannot, we submit, be expected to provide services without reasonable assurances of timely payment.
“Where there is slippage we are prepared, as we have, over time, to exercise some measure of understanding to an extent that is reasonable.”

Noting that the issue of withdrawal of services only arises when their material ability to provide services, as a result of lengthy payment delays, is exhausted, at which point they have no option but to withdraw their services as a regrettable necessity rather than a form of some insidious action, the companies said:

“Accordingly, we vigorously reject any suggestion that we are inclined to use outstanding payments as an excuse to ‘play games’ with our garbage disposal responsibilities.
“Indeed, our acceptance, over time, of late payment as a fait accompli is linked to our understanding of the critical importance of the service we provide; it is not an undertaking from which we have ever walked away without the most careful and deliberate contemplation.
“We have only ever withdrawn our services when a point is reached when, to borrow a time-worn Guyanese saying, ‘water more than cornflour.’”

With the approaching Christmas season, the companies said, their concern at this time of year is with ensuring that the citizenry does not have to endure garbage-related inconveniences.

They said, in closing, that it is against the foregoing backdrop that they repeat their earlier undertaking that they stand prepared to resume work immediately upon receiving City Hall’s clearance.