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Terrible waste of money taking place at City Hall
Dear Editor,
The Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown must have attained by now an achievement that could be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as being the most profligate municipality in the world. Over the last several months, the Council has created scores of new positions at the senior management level whilst filling many other senior positions that had become vacant and which were deliberately not being filled as an act of fiscal restraint and due to the lack of necessity for them.
Could someone say why the Town Clerk’s office needs a Town Clerk, a Deputy Town Clerk and two Assistant Town Clerks? In the past when the city was properly managed they had no Assistant Town Clerks. Why does the City Engineer’s Department need seven engineers on the staff whilst the city continues to flood, the roads are filled with holes and bridges are collapsing everywhere? Why do they need a Public Relations Section staffed with so many persons when the image and reputation of Georgetown continues to be at its lowest ebb?
Why do senior functionaries need bodyguards? Are they afraid of being robbed of their wealth? Why does the Council need to create a Human Resources Department, when the Personnel Section they had was notoriously underperforming and underutilized? This section was capriciously upgraded from a section to a department.
Of course everyone within that section starting with the head was catapulted up the salary scale with fancy and important sounding titles. Then many new positions were added with these positions carrying with them super salaries, allowances, and many other perks also. Of course there have been no improvements in the management or motivation of Council’s human resources as these persons were not given the tools and in many instances lack the competence to perform. So they are just enjoying the ride of their lives off the backs of the citizens.
Another archetypal instance is the upgrading of the Municipal Cleansing Section, a section that came under the Public Health Department, that had responsibility for managing the Incinerator, several landfill sites around the city, and the entire process of refuse collection in the city though its own fleet of garbage trucks, graders etc., to the Solid Waste Department with a lot of fancy sounding positions whilst at the same time they outsourced more than 90 percent of refuse collection in the city, closed down the Incinerator ‘Old Smokey’ and gave up responsibility for managing landfill sites. Totally Amazing!
The irony of this situation is that in years gone by when they had fewer fancy departments, less highly paid managers and directors, when they had no public relations section, when their senior staffers did not have chauffeurs, bodyguards, sports utility vehicles to drive around in and to drop their children to school and families’ shopping, no cutting edge all expenses paid cellular phones, none of the many overseas training opportunities and first class trips abroad currently enjoyed, Georgetown was the Garden City of the Caribbean. It was immaculate, with smooth roads with working streetlights, clean drains that children played in, good sanitation and proper security in the markets, etc.
Today with all of that reckless and uncontrolled spending on themselves, the city stinks! There are junkies and thieves everywhere, the municipal markets have the largest rodents in the world, the drains are clogged with weed and unmentionables, animals are bludgeoned to death at the Abattoir, the Stabroek Market Wharf has collapsed, the Kitty Market is still to be completed, the City Hall building looks like a deserted haunted castle, the Merriman’s Mall has become a shantytown, visiting the cemetery is akin to going on an exotic safari trip. It is all such a mess!
Sean Levius
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