No garbage collected for two months in major sections of the city

Mar 09, 2015 News

…City Hall says tenders are currently being looked at

For two months now residents in the disputed Groups Seven and Eight in the city have not had their garbage collected, and persons are now figuring to take matters into their own hands. At least this is the idea of one resident who told the newspaper that he is thinking about hiring a vehicle to discard his waste since City Hall has not rectified their differences to restore garbage collection in the community.

Disquiet at City Hall has seen the garbage situation getting progressively worse.

It was noted that garbage is piling up aback of residents’ homes since there is no one to collect their waste. This is because the Administrative and Executive arms of City Hall have disagreed on who will collect garbage in the areas. Most notable, the Executive said, is the refusal of the acting Town Clerk to carry out the decision made by Council to have tenders for garbage collectors to work the communities.
According to the Mayor and City Council, the areas in the city where garbage is collected are placed into groups. The M&CC would normally serve all the groups but with dwindling resources, the body decided to tender out Groups Seven and Eight to private waste management firms.
They said Puran Brothers and Cevon’s Waste Management both had quotations for the areas.
But for one group, Puran was cheaper than Cevon’s and the other group, Cevon’s was cheaper than Puran. However, Puran was given both areas to be serviced after the Town Clerk said that she had preferred to work with one contractor.
Subsequent accusations of financial irregularities against the Town Clerk by the Council forced them to change signatories to their bank account. With this done, payments to Puran could not be made since the identified Councilors refuse to sign off cheques that the Council did not approve.
Despite the Town Clerk claiming that Puran was doing volunteer work in the two locations, the waste management company has threatened legal action against the Council for the non-payment of work done. In the past, the Council has hired contractors to conduct garbage clean up without contracts, and the Town Clerk refused to pay them. In this case, the Town Clerk on her own hired Puran and there was no contract. Since the decision was not made by the Council, they too have decided that they will not be making any payments and made that clear to Local Government Minister, Norman Whitaker, when he intervened to ask the Council to pay Puran’s.
Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green said that when Sooba refused to pay other contractors on the basis of ‘no contracts’, the Minister had agreed, “so we will not consider his double-standard on behalf of Puran’s,” she stated.
The Council indicated last week that tenders for solid waste management services for Groups Seven and Eight were opened on March 3, in the Council’s Chamber. While giving prominence to the fact that the law refers to the Council as the decision maker, the Deputy Mayor said that currently, bids by the two major waste management agencies in the country-Cevons and Puran-are being considered and residents in the two groups should soon get some relief. Groups Seven and Eight represent several communities in Central and South Georgetown.