The reason for this drastic action which had far more serious consequences for the inhabitants of Georgetown than it did for the municipality per se, was that the M&CC owes GPL the not inconsiderable sum of $611M. So far so good. It is a straightforward case of the utility wants its bills paid, and the city, as usual, presumably has no funds. Nothing in GT, however, is ever that straightforward. It transpires that for its part GPL owes rates to the city, but the two sides cannot agree on how much the total comes to. The electricity company says it is $113M, while Mayor Hamilton Green assesses it at $781M.
It is at this point that everything becomes a little murky – Georgetown style. There has been no explanation from any official involved in the dispute as to why the huge discrepancy between the two versions of what the utility is said to owe the city. Whatever the truth of the matter, even on the basis that GPL’s calculations are correct, the company clearly has not paid its rates and taxes for some time. A subsequent statement from the utility maintained that its annual rates and taxes amounted to $22M, suggesting arrears dating back at least five years. As for the M&CC, it has enlightened no one about how long it is since it last paid an electricity bill. However, the GPL statement said that the annual power bill for the city was $180M, suggesting the municipality has been delinquent for something over three years.
And just to add further confusion to the tale, at a meeting on Wednesday between City Hall officials and those from GPL, the latter’s Chairman, Mr Brassington, said that he was prepared for an exchange of cheques by the two sides, but only if the company were to be exempted from paying interest on its outstanding balance. At this point Mayor Green was reported to have jumped in with the interjection that the collection of interest by the M&CC was a statutory obligation. While this is true, it is also true that only recently an amnesty on the payment of interest was granted to citizens who owed back rates in a bid to collect from defaulters, so exemption on interest has not been an unthinkable concept in the history of the municipality’s operations.
There were of course the other petty frictions souring the atmosphere of the meeting: Mr Brassington claimed that GPL was forced to go the disconnection route because all its correspondence to the municipality had been ignored. “Not only do you not want to pay,” he was quoted as saying, “but for over a year we have gotten no response from you on the way forward, even though several letters were sent to you.” Town Clerk (ag) Yonette Pluck would not let it pass. The council had always responded to correspondence sent by the company, she asserted, and it was in fact GPL which had failed to answer letters sent by the municipality. Not surprisingly, the meeting ended with no accord between the two sides, and they must now assemble again to see what can be worked out.
The éminence grise in this story is, of course, the government, which knows full well how cash-strapped the city is, and which likes things that way so it can pursue its own political games. Last week with all the smugness of a Cheshire cat, the Ministry of Local Government had its own contribution to make to the imbroglio by reminding the citizenry that the PNCR owed $100M in rates and taxes. The rates on the opposition’s Sophia headquarters, it was said, had not been paid in over a decade, and in the case of some of the other properties owned by the PNCR, for fifteen years. “Given the glaring exhibition of political bias in the collection of rates and taxes,” the ministry said, “[it] will not be involved in making any representation of assistance until the city collects rates and taxes owed by the PNCR.” In other words, citizens should stand by for some further disconnections of municipal facilities.
This is a case where absolutely everyone involved is in the wrong; no one is in a position to point fingers at anyone else. This situation has been reached because of a mixture of politics and incompetence, and the residents of the capital are simply fed up with all the entities which have played a part in this convoluted story.
First there is the government, which wants to see as many crises as possible descend on Georgetown before local government elections are held. Why they believe that the inhabitants of the capital are so ignorant as not to see through their rather crude ploys is something of a mystery; contrary to what they think, it is not a tactic designed to earn them any extra municipal votes. They know the municipality does not have enough funds to discharge its mandate; after it was explained by Mr Rockliffe, they now should be in no doubt that the M&CC cannot easily use parate execution to recover monies owed to it; and they have enough reports – the latest from Mr Keith Burrowes – to guide them as to what can be done in the short term to introduce greater rationality into municipal arrangements. But they are not interested in any of that; they are only concerned with their never-ending quarrel with the PNC. As they know well, if both the latter party and GPL paid their rates, it still would not cover the municipality’s electricity bill.
As for the main opposition party, it is disgraceful that they can simply not bother to pay rates and taxes on their properties for upwards of a decade. It is sheer hypocrisy for them to hold forth on the government starving the city council of funds when they themselves are not meeting their statutory obligations to the municipality. They had better fall silent on the subject of good governance, transparency and accountability until they have put their own house in order; after all, those are concepts which are not just supposed to apply to the PPP/C, but to all the parliamentary parties. As for the Mayor who is an executive member of the main opposition, why was the extent to which the PNCR was in default not made public years before this?
Then there is the city council, whose budgetary allocations should list payment of GPL’s bills as one of the priorities. Presumably the thinking was that since GPL was not paying the rates, it would not pay GPL. But no responsible organization can operate in that way. Considering that the utility has seemingly not paid rates and taxes for some years, at what point did the municipal authorities attempt to meet officials of the company to seek to recover the monies due to them? The allegations and counter-allegations about ignoring correspondence make irritating reading, but supposing any of them are true, did no official at the top of either entity consider picking up the phone and ask to speak to the other?
And as for GPL, it probably felt it had cover about not paying the rates, given the government’s attitude to the council. However, this does it no credit. And now that it has precipitated a crisis with its disconnections which surely could have been avoided given a different approach at an earlier stage, like Mayor Green, one has to wonder at its black-out choices. Cutting off power to the day-care centre, the Liliendaal pumps and the abattoir is definitely a no-no, for public health and safety reasons. As the Mayor said, why not disconnect the street lamps (or some of them) first, since they consume more current than any of the other facilities. As it is, half of GT struggles along without street lights in any case. And why, one wonders, did GPL not take advantage of the amnesty on interest for rates owed which was on offer from the council earlier this year, rather than demand special treatment now that the period has passed?
Citizens are tired and exasperated. All they want is that the various bosses, political and otherwise, stop their shenanigans and sort this problem out.
