Govt should resign over parking meter fiasco- Jagdeo

Mar 24, 2017 News

Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo is calling on the government to resign over the controversial parking meter project that was recently suspended for three months by the ruling administration.

Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo

At a press conference, yesterday, Jagdeo said that the reason advanced by the government for the suspension, flies in the face of logics when the parking meter has been a topic for discussion for many months now.
The government said that it was suspending the parking meter to facilitate more consultations and that more needs to be known about the project. “What additional information this government needs; they saw the contract and they signed the by-laws.”
The former President said that if indeed the government needs more information on the project the entire cabinet should resign for incompetence and ineptitude. Jagdeo said that what is baffling is the fact that the Ministry of Finance in reviewing the contract said that there were serious issues with the document and it will be burdensome to the public.
Further, Jagdeo said that the government did nothing although there was no public tendering for the project and that the deal was directly negotiated between the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and Smart City Solutions (SCS).
Jagdeo said that the government did nothing, all this time, and it is only because of the public outcry that they have now decided to address the issue. The opposition leader rhetorically questioned if the government was not privy to all of this information and what were they doing prior to now.
All of this information, according to Jagdeo, was in the public domain and unless the government was elsewhere there is no way they could not have known about this ‘bad’ deal.
He said this latest move by the government is a skillful attempt to get beyond the current protest and he suspects that after three months the deal will re-emerge in a different form and people will still have to pay. In addition Jagdeo said that this latest move is aimed at ‘saving face’ and the public will surmise that the government is taking decisive action.
The opposition leader is accusing the government of being complicit in the parking meter deal and that the deal has exposed the administration’s incompetence and catalog of lies.
Cabinet had recently taken a decision to suspend the Parking Meter Project for a period of three months. Bulkan’s order followed deliberations by Cabinet which ultimately instructed him to formally suspend the operation of the by-laws governing the parking meter project with immediate effect.
In addition, Cabinet also instructed Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan to advise the Commissioner of Police to ensure that citizens and their vehicles, would receive the protection of the Guyana Police Force to prevent them and their vehicles from being unduly hindered or restrained in any way whatsoever by the Georgetown City Council and its agents.

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