– M&CC writes AG office for second opinion

THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has written to the Attorney General’s office in its quest to obtain a second opinion regarding the recent pullout by the two main garbage contractors.

The first advice received from lawyer Roger Yearwood was that the contractors – Puran Brothers Disposal Services and Cevons Waste Management Inc. – breached their contracts with the M&CC by opting to pull their services from the City last November.

According to the M&CC, the contractors could have instead opted to take the municipality to court instead of withdrawing their garbage collection services.

Since then, City Hall has hired a number of smaller contractors for services up to January 31, 2018. At the most recent statutory meeting, however, the M&CC agreed that the private contractors will continue to work until February 26, 2019.

In the meantime, the M&CC is awaiting word from the Attorney General’s office so it can decide on the way forward with both sets of contractors.
General Manager at Purans, Kalesh Puran, told the Guyana Chronicle on Wednesday that the M&CC has asked that his company come back on board to clear Groups seven and nine, which encompasses areas that usually feature a heavy buildup of garbage, such as Albouystown and surrounding neighbourhoods.

The company did not want to refuse the work and, hence, has to put up with the conditions set out by the municipality, such as clearing the areas once a week instead of twice, as happened before.

Mr Puran said the M&CC also wants to alter costs, which he finds hard to understand in view of their existing contract which is valid until next year.
Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan had announced that the government was going to provide 100 per cent bailout to the M&CC.

According to Puran, $50M each was paid over to them and Cevons in December, and the companies continue to wait on word from the ministry on the payment of the remaining balances.

Proprietor of Cevons, Morse Archer, said the last thing he heard from the City Council was that they were seeking a second opinion, which has been quite some time back. He said the M&CC’s attempt to change up the contracts is not good for business.

Both contractors had said that it was not a case where they wanted to stop working, but that their current financial positions could not permit them to continue working without pay.

Representatives of both companies had said they were frustrated by the M&CC’s inability to make timely payments to them. “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,” Archer had said.

The contractors had opted to pull their services the previous year, 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 make some effort to contact them on a new system beginning 2018. However, the identical situation repeated itself in 2018.
The way forward in the matter will depend on the second set of advice received by the City Council.