Allocation for countrywide clean up should be kept away from M&CC - Rohee

Allocation for countrywide clean up should be kept away from M&CC – Rohee

Apr 03, 2014 News

General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), Clement Rohee, is of the opinion that the recently announced $1Billion budgetary allocation by Government for a country-wide cleanup campaign, $500M of which is for the City. should be outsourced to a private or public institution.
It should not be given to the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), he added.

General Secretary of the PPP Clement Rohee

Rohee in a public missive, said that the reason for such a decision is because the Mayor Hamilton Green has established a track record for mismanaging the council and by extension its funds.
He said, “It is no secret that under his tenure, Georgetown has become a garbage city as the Mayor continues to mismanage the Council and gobble up the city’s resources.”
Rohee added, “The Mayor and his side kick Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green can learn an invaluable lesson on how to manage and run an effective local democratic organ from other PPP/C Administered municipalities as well as the wider Caribbean.”
The PPP General Secretary has urged the government against putting the $500 M budgeted for the city in the hands of the Mayor and his council “especially in view of their sordid fraudulent record of mismanagement and unaccountability at City Hall.
“We urge government to engage civil society to find ways and means of addressing the solid waste crisis in Georgetown,” he said.
One of those means, according to Rohee, is by outsourcing the responsibility for the execution of the cleanup campaign.
“Knowing in the past how these bureaucracies tend to absorb large amounts of money to keep them going because we have to pay big salaries to bureaucrats to ensure that the project runs well, it might seem as a better option to me based on experience that they may be considering or they might consider outsourcing these projects to other institutions whether in the public or private sector,” said Rohee.
He then said that in most of the Regions, garbage collection is outsourced to private contractors and is working very effectively apart from some minor issues.
“I think we can use that model as an example because what is important is that at the end of the day people feel satisfied that their garbage is collected and disposed of in a way that doesn’t affect their health or private and public sanitation so out sourcing might be one of the pathways to address the implementation of that project.”
What is worthy to note is that Mayor Green has previously announced that the $500M budgetary allocation is nothing more than an “election gimmick or ploy as the run-up to either Local Government Elections or as we suspect, National Elections.”
]He said that Government was ignoring the council, investing money into the City, while starving the council of what it needs to perform its functions. Green had further highlighted that council was not consulted on the campaign.
The PPP General Secretary said that his party is fully supportive of this budgetary allocation which he outlined “is aimed at enhancing our surroundings while at the same time removing huge piles of garbage in the city of Georgetown… we strongly believe that the cleanup campaign must aim to achieve a culture change in our society through a strong public education programme.”