Terms of resumption were yesterday afternoon signed between representatives of striking city workers and the Local Government Ministry and will see the workers returning to their duties within 72 hours.
“They have up to 72 hours the latest to start back… they ought to start to meet and discuss the issues,” Minister within the Local Government Ministry Norman Whitaker, told Stabroek News briefly last evening.
The signing came a day shy of a week since Guyana Local Government Officers Union and the Guyana Labour Union opted to take industrial action after the non-payment of salaries for the month of August, among other issues. All workers were said to be paid as of Monday.
The city workers continued to strike yesterday and picketed in front of the City Hall compound and were later joined by councillors. These persons subsequently met with the Mayor Hamilton Green during a press conference while some of the protestors were allowed to listen to the proceedings.
“We are in the midst of a very serious crisis that is affecting the city as a whole and citizens generally… I find it necessary to put this situation in a proper and wider context. What we are witnessing is that there is a flagrant violation of the 1980 constitution which states that the institutional arrangement should be structured to decentralize power. What we see unveiling is an old theology which disallows any sharing of power and responsibility in society,” Green said.
He opined that the government is disinterested in local government reform. “They want to manage a unilateral state.
We want them to be honest and tell us we don’t believe in local government as a system, we don’t believe in sharing responsibility… They’ve not said that but they have in different ways been putting that into operation and the city is one of the victims,” he added.
Green reiterated concerns about the issues faced by the municipality, including the deplorable conditions under which workers operate. He noted that the present issue concerning the acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba—whose removal workers demanded—is an important one but should not be considered the genesis of the council’s difficulties. However he stated, the difficulties “represent the attitude of an uncaring and undemocratic government”.
“Here, this council of sane men and women, most of the time…” Green said jokingly before Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green affirmed that members of the council are “sane all the time”. Green said that the council made a recommendation and it was dismissed. “We have tried overtime as a council to put things in place but what the public needs to know is that we can’t get into implementation. That is not our business,” he added.
With an apology to the citizens for the obvious disruption due to the strike action, Green explained that the workers were provoked and frustrated. At the same time, he continued, it is necessary for change. “We support them.
I hope they can come to end this hiatus, to end this greed and to end this assault on the citizens,” he noted.
Keith Burrowes, during a press conference yesterday chaired by Minister Whitaker, said that he was “extremely fed up.”
“Every time we seem to be making progress, there’s a problem with this body. We give them so much material… support,” he said.
According to Burrowes, through discussions with Sooba some weeks ago, the municipality was able to get tremendous support from businesses to resolve the garbage situation. “We got a few businessmen, who I would like to thank, to loan us equipment like Bobcats and trucks and so on and we started an exercise that bore some fruit. My frustration now is the strike,” he noted.
However, Burrowes admitted that while there are some employees of the M&CC who try their best efforts, there are also “unscrupulous” businesses that stall the work of the council.
