The day before yesterday, Town Clerk Royston King held a meeting in City Hall’s chambers with wash-bay operators, during which he announced that those located in Queenstown would no longer be permitted to operate and that they had two weeks in which to cease work. The city’s chief official told the 60 people in attendance that many of the wash bays were sited in residential areas, in defiance of the prohibition on commercial activities there.
As we reported on Thursday, according to Mr King the purpose of the meeting was to alert the gathering to the effects of the increasing number of wash bays on the surrounding environment, and “to ensure that we deliver to all citizens a city that is safe, that is healthy, that is green.” Inevitably, a Queenstown wash bay operator asked him why other businesses were not being targeted as well, and the Town Clerk reassured him that the city council would be looking at all commercial activities in Queenstown, and that these would not be allowed to remain.
According to our report, he extended the framework of his response to include information which had not been asked by the questioner, namely, why Queenstown in particular. The answer was, it seems, that the businesses in Queenstown had been subject to more adverse publicity than those elsewhere, and City Hall had been the recipient of a plethora of complaints both from residents as well as police traffic officers.
It might be noted in passing that over the years – and not just recently – Stabroek News has published any number of letters to the editor complaining about trucks, wash bays, mechanic shops and the like in Queenstown, that never produced any response. The most recent was from an elderly lady in Crown Street, who, among other things, was concerned about a wash bay which catered to army vehicles. Having said that, if the municipality has now decided to act initially in relation to the ward where grievances have had the most airing, the Town Clerk did indicate that they would nevertheless be looking at all residential areas.
While the audience for the most part listened to Mr King with an air of resignation, not all business operators in Queenstown were quite so patient. This newspaper quoted one who was not at the meeting but who was quite incensed as saying: “The majority of wash bays are in residential areas. A lot of businesses are in residential areas. What are they going to do with them? What are you trying to do now, create jobless people and less revenue for the country?”
And this, of course, in an indirect way identifies the nature of the problem the city authorities have to confront. The bylaws about commercial activity in residential areas have been disregarded for so many years, and such an enormous number of businesses small and large, have become ensconced there, that it will not be a simple exercise moving them. There will too, be the inevitable outcry about throwing people out of work in hard economic times. Wash bays are one thing, but what about large business owners who have built concrete premises on house lots and who run substantial enterprises? What does the Town Clerk have in mind for them – or will he just move against the small man?
This time, at least, the wash bay operators were called into a meeting, where the council’s plans were explained. While the Queenstown ones were, as said above, given two weeks’ notice, the others were asked to return on February 15 to receive the guidelines by which they should function, and to register their businesses, which will be subject to inspection by the City Engineer’s Department and the Department of Public Health. The former, it was reported, had a design for wash bays, and the operators would be required to comply with safety standards, among other things. We also reported that Mr King told them that the council may investigate helping with relocation, and that owners could organize themselves to relocate under a contractual arrangement with the city.
Strangely, it would appear that the city is prepared to tolerate wash bays on the parapets on payment of a fee. If there are no alternative spaces where the operators can construct the ‘modern’ arrangements designed by the City Engineer, then they will almost certainly take to the parapets, where many already function. And just which parapets did the Town Clerk have it in mind they should use, one wonders. Not those in residential areas, surely; wash bays on the parapets would be worse in all respects than under a house or in a yard. Clearly citizens need some kind of clarification from the council’s chief officer on this.
The bottom line of all of this, however, is that the municipality is fundamentally right about restoring some kind of zoning order to the capital. However, since the problem is so widespread and so entrenched and this is a low-wage economy, the issue is not deciding to do it, but how it should be done. Queenstown apart – that is a relatively small area ‒ one suspects that Mr King has to do a lot more homework about how to tackle relocation in its larger aspect, and be a lot more definitive about what kind of assistance the council can give those to be evicted. Wash bays are just the beginning because they have fairly simple requirements; mechanic’s shops and the like will prove more of a challenge, and they cannot be left to function on a parapet anywhere.
Georgetowners wait to see how the municipality will move on this in order to reduce what Mr King called the “lawlessness” in the city; hopefully there will be more forward planning involved on this occasion than there was in the case of the vendors.
