The City Council has not lost its talent for taking the harried citizens of Georgetown by surprise. There it was last week passing a substantial budget which included a plan to introduce a weekly $100 fee for the collection of garbage from householders. Are we to believe that the councillors who agreed to this hare-brained scheme actually live in the capital? Leaving aside for the moment, the substantive issue of payment, just how, one asks, are these fees to be collected? Will citizens have to go to City Hall or somewhere to pay, or will the sum be added to the rates and taxes? And we all know that where those are concerned, as of last year the M&CC had $8 billion outstanding.
And unless the fee were attached to the rates, just how would the city authorities be able to establish on a current basis who had not paid? And if they manage to do that, is it intended that defaulters should be sanctioned? If so, how would they instruct the garbage collectors as to whose rubbish to remove and whose to leave? And how would the collectors have the time to check they had removed the waste from the right address? The latitude for confusion and mistakes in such a situation does not bear thinking about, even if the money were to be collected at the same time as the garbage. And if that is the idea, then it is hardly very practical, since many householders would not be available to pay the fee when the men turned up.
If the intention on the other hand, is to include the charge in the rates, and not to take punitory action against those who do not pay the fee, then a large number of householders and businesses will be getting their rubbish removed for free, since far too many of them do not pay their property taxes in any case.
But the worst of this proposal is the size of the fee at a time when more residents than ever are unemployed or have fallen into poverty as a consequence of the pandemic − which does not necessarily mean to say the plan could be justified had there not been a pandemic. What single mother, for example, working a low-paid night shift as a security guard, could afford to feed her children, find the rent, and pay the City Council $400 or more a month to take away her refuse?
All of this is a recipe for a rubbish-filled city. The more affluent areas would pay up, whether the payment was attached to the rates and taxes or came in some other form, but compliance in the less affluent ones would prove a challenge. As a result, the M&CC could expect an exponential growth in fly-tipping, and the continued dumping of garbage in the trenches and canals, with all that that implies in terms of flooding.
Where the council might have a case is in relation to commercial waste. Businesses in this city generate huge amounts of garbage, and some of them are notoriously irresponsible and have engaged in fly-tipping on a regular basis. In July last year Solid Waste Director Walter Narine told a meeting that to the best of his knowledge only Guyana collects commercial waste free of cost. He is probably not correct about that; one can think of quite a few underdeveloped countries which will be in the same, if not a worse position than this one. However, his point is taken; he told the City Council that they were spending millions on a weekly basis to remove refuse and businesses were paying only limited rates.
At the bottom of the M&CC’s problem of trying to maintain a clean environment is one of money. Among other things, they require new trucks, and the ones they have are in need of maintenance. Last month Mayor Ubraj Narine said that the municipality had not purchased or received any new equipment for garbage removal since the coalition’s period in office. In addition, he wanted central government to provide funds to deep clean the city’s markets to help inhibit the spread of Covid-19. He lamented the fact that the government had not yet released its $10 million subvention to the council for last year as well as $30 million for 2021. As of last week it still had not done so. It is one reason, although not the only one, for the M&CC having to cast around for alternative sources of funding.
The municipality’s financial woes date back to the period when the PPP/C was in office previously, when it strangled the council and allowed the capital to fall into a state of decline. Georgetown is, of course, the PNC’s heartland, and so barring the time immediately following the 1994 local government election, when its vote split, it has always maintained a majority on the council. This was a provocation for Freedom House, which has a penchant for controlling everything, and they had a particular problem with the then mayor, Mr Hamilton Green.
Coalition voters in the city would have been concerned about what might happen now that the PPP/C was restored to government office, but two months ago President Irfaan Ali met with Mayor Ubraj Narine and his delegation, informing them that collaboration between the central administration and City Hall was essential in addressing the key issues which affected the city. For his part, the Mayor was reported as saying he was willing to work along with the government for the benefit of the capital.
All this sounds very promising, except that, as noted above, the municipality has not yet received its subvention, added to which while the administration is not being so overtly punitive, it has not given up its habit of control. A little over a week ago the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government sent a memo to the council asking that it submit a monthly status report on all projects, as well as a variety of other reports.
As the Mayor pointed out, this is not within the guidelines of the Municipal and District Councils Act, and in his view represented an attempt to usurp the authority of the City Council. Minister Nigel Dharamlall told this newspaper that a copy of the memo had been sent to all the municipalities, and that it was his belief that Mayor Narine was being an obstacle to transparency within the council.
Where the first part of his comment is concerned, it makes no difference how many municipalities received the communication; the question relates to whether the government is really committed to devolution and co-operation in any meaningful sense, not to mention whether it is acting within the law, which it seems it might not be. Georgetown voted as Georgetown voted, and the Minister cannot seek to reverse that by imposing controls from the centre, although clearly there have to be checks on corruption. As for the second part of what he had to say, that is certainly not helpful if he is genuinely committed to working with the council to improve the appearance of a city which is supposed to attract overseas visitors. Micro-managing Georgetown, as the Mayor called it, and disparaging its most senior citizen will not clear the garbage, although appropriate funding just might.
And where the matter of funding is concerned, the council as well as the government knows very well that if the M&CC were to collect the rates and taxes on a systematic basis, and were able to recover most of the eye-watering sums owed by citizens over an extended time-frame, there would be absolutely no need to contemplate a garbage fee. The council periodically grants amnesties for those who have fallen behind on their property tax payments, but this is likely to bring in only more modest sums from ordinary residents; the big-time defaulters in the form of commercial entities have been thumbing their noses at the city authorities for years.
The reason for this was explained more than once by the late Mr Gunn Rockliffe, who said that after the Hoyte administration amended the law on parate execution, which was how the City Council had previously recovered unpaid property taxes, it had become a very burdensome, long-winded and expensive process to take delinquents to court, which was why it was not often done. If the government wants a more pristine city now, it might ask AG Anil Nandlall to look at the law again to make the recovery of debts easier for City Hall. Once that could be accomplished reasonably expeditiously, it might concentrate a few businessmen’s minds wonderfully.
It is true that City Hall has increased property taxes by ten per cent. What is needed, however, is a total rationalisation of these. As far back as 2017, Finance Committee Chairman Oscar Clarke had told this newspaper that there were a number of unassessed properties in Georgetown in terms of construction, expansion and change of use. Last year the Mayor said he had been pushing for a valuation of properties, since there were still some businesses on Regent Street paying $12,000, while property owners in Queenstown were paying roughly $16,000.
This matter too lies within the hands of central government, since appraisals have to be done by the Valuation Unit of the Ministry of Finance. If the government is serious about working with the city authorities, it should be looking at what it can do on its side to make the capital cleaner – and that does not mean special clean-up exercises for occasions like Independence Day.
What the residents of Georgetown do not want is yet another tax to pay for what the M&CC should be doing in any case. The burden will fall disproportionately on the conscientious citizens as usual, and so they wait for both City Hall and the government to take meaningful steps to solve an issue which has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with urban cleanliness.
