The Heads of four sub-committees established to address the restoration of Georgetown will convene their first meeting today at the Ministry of Local Government at 3.30pm.
A Government Informa-tion Agency (GINA) report said the committees and their chairpersons are Norman Whittaker, Resource Mobili-sation; Volda Lawrence MP, Technical Committee; Joseph Harmon MP, Solid Waste Management and Kit Nascimento, Public Aware-ness Committee.
The sub-committees were established at a multi-stakeholder meeting convened on Monday, after the National Assembly approved an amended motion on the city’s restoration at its March 14 meeting.
The meeting agreed that draft TORs will be presented by the respective chairperson at today’s meeting; committee members who were nominated in absentia would be notified by the persons who chose them; a public statement from the Office of Minister Norman Whittaker will be made with respect to the decisions arising out of the meeting and that the next stakeholders meeting would be convened in two weeks.
Several key issues of concern were raised at Monday’s meeting including whether a plan on the subject matter of solid waste management and related matters such as drainage existed for the Georgetown and if so which areas are not being addressed; the extent of the public’s involvement in the plan’s implementation, issues of compaction, payment of tipping fees, recycling of some waste and governance.
Importantly, there were also several suggestions and recommendations such as extending restoration beyond garbage collection and includes removing illegal structures built on reserve lands, breach of building codes, roadside vending, kokers and sluices.
It was also recommended that any plan must include an effective and thorough public education programme and should not be seen as a bureaucratic exercise; that critical areas of the restoration programme need to be identified, categorised and stakeholders placed into respective sub-committees.
Each sub-committee should comprise experts, as well as non-technical persons to provide balance to the initiative; the possibilities for recycling should be explored; committees should have deadlines for reporting on solutions; resources to implement motions should be sourced by Central Government and that youth should be included in the programme.
