-Green
With no solution in sight to the city’s garbage crisis, Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green yesterday revealed that there has been no response from government to requests for financial assistance to pay contractors for collection.
Green told reporters at a news conference yesterday that the city council was still awaiting responses from ministers of Finance and Local Government, Dr Ashni Singh and Kellawan Lall, respectively, while saying citizens would have to resort to prayers if negotiations for resumption of garbage collection failed.
Green said he regretted the indignity facing citizens as well as the health hazards caused by the situation.
But even as he issued apologies and acknowledged that the city was in an unsatisfactory and unacceptable state, Green said that the bottom line was money, which the council still does not have to meet its financial obligations to the two companies contracted to collect garbage in the city. The council is still also unable to pronounce definitively on how soon it would be able to deal with the stench that has taken over many parapets and street corners as residents struggle for means to dispose their garbage. Many have since been forced to resort to paying trucks which drive through various communities charging up to $300 to empty the garbage of each household.
Green told reporters that the current situation pushed him to meet political party heads as well as members of civil society, including union representatives, to point out that the issue was not a municipality one but also one for the government. Some of those who were present at the meeting and at the press conference included union representatives Gillian Burton, Andrew Garnett and Norris Witter, politicians Chandra Narine Sharma and Peter Ramsaroop as well as African Cultural Development Association (ACDA) representative Eric Phillips.
Green said he believed the government has set out to punish the people of Georgetown for not electing it to manage the city and that it has frustrated every attempt made by the council to win its approval in broadening its revenue base. “There is this zeal and anxiety in holding local government elections and hurls of insults at [Steve] Surujbally… but the whole thing is designed to frustrate the city and get citizens to get fed up and say ‘out with the municipality,’” Green charged.
Meanwhile, Town Clerk Yonette Pluck reported that citizens have started to respond to the amnesty and the city remains hopeful that it would continue to persuade taxpayers to pay their taxes. She pointed out that the city has a number of high agenda financial obligations and while settling the issue with the contractors was one of them, she could not make any promises as to when the situation would return to normalcy.
Interjecting at that point, Green said that in another 48 hours something should be arrived at but he too could make no promises.
The city has no back-up plan in case its transaction with the garbage contractors bears no fruit soon. Pressed for an answer in this regard, Green pointed to prayers. He said the council may have to revert to non-traditional means of funding otherwise it will remain cash strapped. “Hopefully government can persuade its valuation department to allow us to raise our taxes,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the council is making business places in Regent Street and other central areas the priority and clearing them as the need arises, while residential communities continue to have the build up.
Pluck told reporters that officers from the Public Health Department have been going around advising residents on how to treat with the build up, including using Jeyes fluid to quell the swarms of flies following the excessive build up of garbage.
Whenever the municipality finds itself in financial struggles like the current one the citizens of Georgetown suffer and are left with heaps of garbage to deal within a city where street corner fires are prohibited by law. The council is looking to get its own garbage trucks in the longer term, but the mayor has admitted that such a system would only work if there was an effective solid waste department.