The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has called for the parking meter project to be “scrapped forthwith,” even as the Mayor of Georgetown Patricia Chase-Green announced plans to go ahead.
At the party’s weekly press conference yesterday, General Secretary Clement Rohee said central Government must cease vacillating on the matter, which he views as an “obnoxious and oppressive decision by the APNU+AFC-controlled City Council to install parking meters in the city of Georgetown.”
The proposed deal has engendered controversy over a series of matters including the bona fides of National Parking Systems (NPS). However, the mayor said that a team which had visited Mexico and Panama, is very satisfied that the contractor.
Rohee said the PPP “joins with all Guyanese and their respective organisations who have let their voices be heard in rejecting this selfish and anti-people measure by a few hard-nosed, hard-ears bureaucrats at City Council, whose attempts to install parking meters in Georgetown must be immediately shelved and be made to rest in peace.”
He said, “…Certain pompous members of the Council obviously, have become enthralled by the magic of the parking meter as a means of making money for themselves and at the expense of the citizenry of Georgetown.”
The PPP has noted the total lack of transparency in the public bidding and tendering process in respect to the choice of the vendor of the parking meters, Rohee said.
According to him, the party “objects to the $500 per hour parking fee and finds that an 8 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday employee who owns a motor car and works in the city will have to foot a $4,000 per day or $80,000 per month parking bill at a time when the minimum wage in Guyana is below $35,000 per month…”
Lashing out at the government, he said the “Granger administration cannot escape responsibility for this catastrophic debacle on the part of their satraps ensconced at City Hall. The Minister of Communities must accept full responsibility for this unconscionable imposition on the citizenry of Georgetown.”
Stating that the time had long past for promises of an intervention by government, Rohee said it was a “too little too late approach.”
