Mr. Gill has missed the thrust of our letter

Dec 01, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
We appreciate the reply of Mr. Harry Gill to our letter (The opposition remains conspicuously silent on City Hall’s incompetence KN/29/11/2012).
Unhappily, Mr. Gill has missed the thrust of our letter (The problem of improper disposal of waste is national KN/26/11/2012).
We have noticed the subtle political undertone of his reply. We do not mind that, but we are particularly concerned with those aspects of his letter that are more immediate to the work of the Mayor and City Council. It is here, we believe, that three points need to be made:
1.    Mr. Harry Gill seems to have made up his mind about Council. It is unfortunate because he cannot be objective and reasonable in his approach to matters he is attempting to ventilate in the press.
This has been borne out in his letters on the council. Therefore, further correspondence with Mr. Gill on the challenges we face as a city would be of little benefit to him. As a result, this would be our last reply to any letter on the council written by Mr. Gill.
2.    Mr. Gill posited the need for an Interim Management Committee “…to manage the affairs of the city and to restore the pride we once had as Guyanese.” An Interim Management Committee is not the Holy Grail to the development and progress of the city.
We continue to insist that the problems of the city are wider than the Mayor and City Council. Many of the events and incidents affecting the interests of the city are beyond the control of the municipality. It is not an excuse; it is the current reality of the city.
In 1994, the Interim Management Committee headed by Dr. James Rose said that the city required a broader revenue base to fulfill its responsibility to the citizens of Georgetown. They engaged stakeholders in discussions and sought their cooperation and support to clean up Georgetown.
Eighteen years after, we have not been able to improve our revenue base. With a shallow treasury we are severely constrained in our efforts to provide core services for the city of Georgetown.
It is clear that we must solicit the cooperation of stakeholders to advance the capital. We need a strategic partnership to account for the shortfall in revenue and to allow stakeholders to play their part in keeping the city clean and tidy at all times.
This would help us to reverse the negative trends, which have been gradually gaining ground in all local communities.
Yet, garbage is increasingly demanding more of our resources and affecting the way the city develops. We pointed out that the current landfill site at Haags Bosch, seven miles from Georgetown, has restricted hours of operation and the delay in the turnaround time of our collection trucks and its rippling effects in local communities continue to contribute to illegal dumping in different sections of the city.
Also, we have shown that the vendors alone cannot be blamed for the disgustingly ugly state of the city; some big businesses are heavy contributors to heaps of garbage in central Georgetown.
Wrappings and other packaging materials of popular brands are among the piles of garbage in the city.  Therefore, it would be unfair for any one, including Mr. Gill, to attempt to single out the vendors as the ones littering the city.
The city is fulfilling its mandate in the area of garbage collection. We collect garbage from households, parapets and roadsides in communities in the capital. For this year, for solid waste management, we budgeted 154 million dollars. So far, we have expended more than 100 million dollars of the budgeted sum.
Our challenge is to keep the city clean. This has to do with the attitudes and actions of citizens towards the environment. Most of our citizens are law-abiding and decent, but there are a few who are unfriendly towards the environment. Those are the ones who are hurting the city and causing the council to spend money to clean up instead of doing other developmental works.
3.    Mr. Gill has included in his reply a newspaper article: “Massive fraud uncovered at M&CC- report (Kaieteur News, June 16, 2012).” We wish to admonish Mr. Gill not to be carried away by sensational newspaper headlines. We do not know for a fact that all the things stated in that report are accurate.
Precisely why the authorities had requested further investigations into that report.  We await the final outcome of those investigations. Therefore, it was wrong for Mr. Gill to use that report to comment on the performance of the council.
We make no further comment except this, that the council, the government, the private sector, religious organizations, community groups and citizens must work in a strong partnership to change the fortunes of this beloved city of ours. There is neither a shortcut nor a substitute to this approach. We need to work together for a better, healthier Georgetown.
Royston King
Public Relations Officer
Mayor and City Council

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