With the time frame for central government’s bailout initiative designed to rescue City Hall from a mountain of outstanding debt to its two major garbage collection contractors having expired on December 31 there appears to exist the very real fear that the capital may return to the proverbial square one insofar as the service is concerned. With evidence of a post-Christmas garbage pileup in the capital beginning to emerge it transpires that City Hall had, during the breathing space they had secured on account of government’s intervention, done little if anything to salvage what had become a badly damaged relationship with its two principal cleanup contractors.
Earlier this week the Stabroek Business saw a letter to Cevon’s General Manager Morse Archer from Town Clerk Royston King requesting that the company attend a meeting last Tuesday to discuss and agenda related to the return of Cevon’s and the other major contractor, Puran Brothers to garbage collection duties. Shockingly, the letter was dated December 31, a circumstance that begs the question as to just what City Hall was doing during the period November 27th – December 31st, the period during which government, through the Ministry of Public Works, was footing the bill for garbage collection in the capital. It appeared too, according to Archer, that in requesting a meeting, City Hall had overlooked the fact that it had, in November, terminated the services of both Cevon’s and Puran’s on the grounds that the two had broken the contract with the City by withdrawing their labour in protest over the non-payment over a protracted period of amounts totaling more than $300 million for services rendered for a period dating back to 2016.