On Old Year’s Night some of the church-going citizens of Georgetown were reportedly heard praying urgently that on the stroke of midnight a brisk breeze would descend on the capital and that all of the garbage in the city would be caught up, like a rapture and swept away… and they were praying too that Mayor Green and his Councillors would not be spared by the rapture; that they too would become caught up and retired quietly to their respective homes.
As it happens the Almighty does things in his own time and a new year has dawned and the garbage, the Mayor and his Councillors are all still very much in place. Sorry citizens, the wait for a miracle continues. We must now look to Local Government Elections to do the trick – hopefully.
There has simply been no escaping the Georgetown City Council. It’s like when you step on chewing gum. You must endure the infuriating ordeal of separating the sticky goo from your shoe; the more you try the more it clings on; it is not something that you can ignore. You take it with you everywhere you go. You have to literally set aside everything else and scrape the irritation away.
How do we scrape the irritation of Mayor Green and his Councillors and his staff away? How do we rid ourselves of the mess and the irritation of their incompetence? Do we have to organize a Citizens Demonstration outside City Hall and turn the street into a sort of Tahrir Square (remember Egypt), shouting and screaming to the top of our lungs and refusing to go away until Hammie and his people turn the lights out and depart City Hall.
One might have thought that after the Burrowes Commission things might get a bit better, but not so. The dam had already burst and all the sludge and slurry had already broken free. As Burrowes himself appears to have discovered there is no fixing City Hall. Couldn’t Mr Ramotar help us out here? Couldn’t he arrange some suitable National Award for Mayor Green and company so that it does not appear that they are going home in disgrace?
The drama never stops at City Hall. Now we are being told that another Town Clerk and another City Treasurer might be on the verge of being sent home. More problems with managing money it seems. Apparently somebody is supposed to have said to somebody else that it was OK to pay out a Christmas bonus to staff; never mind the fact that the garbage collectors had not been paid. The incident has triggered the customary infuriating intrigue at City Hall. Some Councillors want the Town Clerk and the Treasurer to carry the can. Others are trying to rescue them. Nothing is ever as it seems there. It’s an unending saga of intrigue and high drama behind not-so-closed-doors (some media houses appear to have access to even the most secret Council meetings) and nothing ever changes. It’s a game really – monopoly – playing monopoly with the lives of the citizens.
Some of the Councillors are backing the two beleaguered officials. Others want them to be removed forthwith. Some are even calling for another Commission of Enquiry. It’s the same old City Hall Claptrap and nothing will change until God answers our prayers and the current municipality ceases to exist.
Mind you, we need to be careful what we wish for since the Local Government Elections may well throw up another Hammie Green and another lot of misfit Councillors and we might well find ourselves having to endure the whole thing all over again.
