The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) yesterday came to an agreement with contractors Cevons Waste Management Inc. and Puran Brothers Disposal Services, which are expected to resume full garbage collection services in the capital from next Monday.
The M&CC had been awaiting legal advice on the status of its contracts with the two companies, which had withdrawn their services last November due to non-payment.
According to M&CC Public Relations Officer Debra Lewis, the M&CC met with the two large contractors to re-negotiate terms of their current garbage collection contracts. She disclosed that the contractors will be resuming their full responsibilities for garbage collecting, as stipulated by their contracts, on May 6th, 2019, while rates which were previously charged for garbage collection will be reduced by 8%.
“After they [Cevons and Puran Brothers] were paid off, they were placed in groups with small contractors to operate in various constituencies, as the M&CC were awaiting legal advice in terms of re-negotiation, and so they will now be assuming full responsibility for Georgetown, in terms of cleaning up,” Lewis explained.
Lewis also expressed gratitude to the small contractors who offered their services after the two larger contractors withdrew their services after failure of payment by the city for their services.
In addition, Lewis claimed that all parties involved were satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations.
She mentioned that the agreements will be officially signed during the course of next week.
Attempts made by this newspaper to contact the companies for comment were unsuccessful.
The two companies withdrew their services on November 26th, 2018 after arguing that they were unable to operate due to the city’s failure to pay them for the work done since June. After an intervention by the Ministry of Communities, the two companies were paid by the end of 2018. They subsequently agreed to resume garbage collection immediately but they were made to work alongside the smaller contractors, who had assumed responsibility for collection during the time Cevons and Puran Brothers were unable to operate, while the city sought legal advice on the status of their contracts. Nonetheless, they were still carrying 50% of the city’s waste. “To date we have not returned to work as per contract. They called us to do group seven and nine and even that is not to full capacity. The verbal agreement is just to clear household waste not parapet waste and bulky waste,” Kaleshwar Puran told this newspaper last Saturday.
It was noted then that the two companies had also not been paid for the little work they were doing, as they refused to bill at any price other than the one contained in their contracts and the city had refused to pay the contract price. “They want to give us 50% and 60% of what we charge under the contract but we were advised to continue to bill to the full sum. There is no formal contract about a new price structure and we can’t just change our invoice price…we can’t under invoice our contract,” Puran noted.
Since the suspension of its contracts with the two companies, the M&CC has been struggling to adequately manage the city’s waste.
