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‘Garden City’ slowly returning to ‘Garbage City’ state?
– businesses, Council blame each other for capital’s unsightly appearance
With central Georgetown apparently reverting to its garbage-strewn state, some members of the commercial sector are blaming the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) for this situation, while City Council is blaming the business community.
“We’re not saying that we are not guilty of dumping garbage on the road, but what we know is that if there were bins around where our businesses are, they will be fully utilize,” one businessman said.
They added that their reason for not having garbage bins placed at their stores was because persons would steal them.
After the 2015 General Elections, the capital city and other environs underwent an amazing transformation, with tons of refuse being removed and drains that had been clogged for years with debris, being cleared.
But Georgetown appears to be slowly returning to its unsightly state.
According to Walter Narine, Director of Solid Waste Management, in 2015, the City Council placed numerous bins around Georgetown, but within months, most were stolen.
“So we removed what was left of the bins. The Council had put out about 200 bins, and we only recovered about 35 of them. There is one of our bins placed in a businessman’s yard, marked M&CC, which he stole from off the road,” Narine said.
A refuse heap in Croal Street
Bottles and boxes in the drains outside the court yard on Brickdam
Narine added that each business entity must have a solid waste receptacle, and the Council would have conducted surveys on a number of business places in the city, “And what we found was that, only about one percent of them had garbage bins in their stores, and some of them are even using plant pots to dispose of their garbage.”
“By placing bins in the commercial sectors we will be giving them an excuse not to have their own waste receptacles. What some of these businesses do is bundle all their garbage at the end of the day, and give it to vagrants for them to dispose of, which they do by making street corners and alley-ways their dumpsites.”
According to Narine, the M&CC is paying Puran Brothers to clean the commercial areas two times a day, with added assistance from the street orderlies and the Solid Waste Department, which also sends out two trucks every day to remove the refuse generated by the business community.
Garbage stored on a utility light post in front Demico house on Croal Street
“We at Council are paying $1M every week to Puran Brothers for them to remove garbage in the commercial areas, and only about two percent of the commercial fees that these businesses have to pay are for garbage removal, and still they don’t pay it,” Narine alleged.
“But bins won’t solve the problems that we are having; the reality of the matter is that most of these business people are from outside Georgetown, and they are primarily concerned about earnings and nothing else.
“We have 25 garbage bins in Camp Street Avenue, and when you walk the avenue you can still see garbage on the sidewalks. That is because people have the habit of dropping their waste wherever they are. Bins are not the solution to this problem, the solution will come when people change their attitude towards garbage disposal.
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