The situation at City Hall has further deteriorated

Aug 02, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The situation at City Hall has further deteriorated, and though the public as expected quite rightly look to that body for action, the elected Mayor and Councillors are in no position to assist or intervene on any municipal matter affecting the city. Ms. Carol Sooba¯the individual imposed on the council as Town Clerk by the government has, with the apparent support of the PPP administration, eroded completely the authority and responsibility of the duly elected council.
After the last statutory meeting, it is clear that the incumbent Acting Town Clerk, Ms. Sooba has assumed imperial-like powers. She has effectively reduced the duly elected council to an irrelevant institution.
This is exacerbated by Ms. Sooba’s total disdain and disrespect for councillors where unprovoked she shouts, and hurls invective and snide remarks during statutory meetings. Her unnecessary and annoying interruptions of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and councillors have now become a total absurdity and are unprecedented in the history of the Georgetown City Council.
Worryingly, an examination of decisions taken by the council since the incumbency of Ms. Sooba shows that 90% of those decisions arrived at after due consideration and deliberations by councillors are completely ignored by Ms. Sooba, and her favourite two words: “not implementable” are often written in the ‘Action Taken’ column in the Statutory Agendas.
By way of example: for months the council requested that we advertise for tenders for collection and removal of garbage from certain areas of Georgetown. After almost an hour of probing and receiving facile and irrelevant answers from Ms. Sooba, it turned out that she has flouted that decision and did not advertise in order to give the council an opportunity to weigh the pros and cons and the financial implications of our responsibility to manage the city’s solid waste.
Some other matters are engaging the attention of the courts and it would be inappropriate for us to make reference to them in this letter of appeal to civil society, except to say that nowhere else in a modern democracy is a public official allowed, apparently unfettered and unrestrained, to exhibit this type of unbelievable and unacceptable behaviour. Ms. Sooba’s actions and statements have been so ridiculous and unbelievable that at the last statutory meeting they earned the displeasure of at least one PPP/C Councillor.
On Monday, in the public gallery there was an overseas-based Guyanese and former employee of the Mayor and City Council who expressed horror at the exchanges, invectives and interruptions of the meeting by Ms. Sooba.
In earlier public statements, Ms. Gail Teixeira, the WPO and others sought to defend Ms. Sooba and introduced race and gender. Neither could remotely be relevant to a fractious strange behaviour of a public official. When over the years, this said Mayor and councillors had cause to discipline officers of a different ethnicity and the same gender of Ms. Sooba, we heard not a word from the WPO, the Teixeiras, et al.
This statement of appeal seeks to do the following:
“Call upon all religious, political, and youth organizations, and the commercial community to speak up to avert further seize of the city and the destruction of our capital.”
Finally, in an effort to reverse the situation all Guyanese should call upon the government, as we now do in this appeal, to operationalise immediately. We wish to emphasise, without further delay, the Local Government Service Commission to put an end to this strange situation where an unqualified and untrained individual was imposed on the largest municipality in Guyana.
This can be done without delay and there can be no excuse for not operationalising this Service Commission. Its absence is a breach of our constitution and the demeaning of democracy.
Also, Government must stop it vacillation and set in motion the processes for local government elections, those elections were not held since 1994.
Georgetown is the capital of the republic and the awkward events and disconnection from the norms are affecting citizens at every level. It is therefore necessary for us to begin a process to analyze the negative events unfolding in our city and to chart the way forward for this beloved Capital of ours.
Hamilton Green
Mayor of Georgetown

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