City Hall does not conform to the norms

May 12, 2018 Letters

Dear Editor,
Is it not yet time for the policymakers and administrators at the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown to own up to their mistakes and to take responsibility for the beleaguered state of our capital city rather than attempting to chastise and penalize everyone else?
Quite recently a major revenue scam was uncovered, whereby it was discovered that a large number of vendors were issued fake receipts by revenue staff for vending fees and rents paid. One would have thought that the police would have been called in, that a comprehensive audit would have been undertaken of the market revenue system, and that the Councillors and the citizens formally notified.
Of course none of this was done because the City Council does not conform to the norms of good governance, transparency and accountability. So everything was quietly swept under the carpet, and ironically it was the vendors from Alexander Street who were harassed instead.
Then we had the bizarre discovery of a farmer who was accused of rearing and slaughtering pigs inside of Le Repentir Cemetery at the southern section for more than 15 years now. The slaughtered pigs are then sold at the Bourda Market. Are pigs no longer slaughtered at the City’s Abattoir?
Now certainly the public health risk cannot be over emphasized, and the urgent need to remove this farmer overstated, instead however one elder Councillor opined that the Council had to consider the livelihood of the farmer, whilst a leading municipal official said that she had compassion on the farmer because she does not want to take bread out of the mouths of people. Unbelievable!
Clearly these Councillors believe that it is more important to keep bread in the mouths of the farmer and her children than to prevent the citizenry to the exposure to all of the bacteria and pathogens from the graveyard that can be transmitted to buyers at the Bourda Market via the pigs (pork).
But do you think the farmer has been removed since? Of course not. Instead she now has more than a half a dozen sows and scores of piglets wallowing in and drinking the cemetery’s groundwater. Simply preposterous!
Another example of the twisted thinking of City Hall is its predisposition to not pay over NIS deductions to the National Insurance Scheme and pay as you earn taxes to the Guyana Revenue Authority which are taken out from employees’ salaries, and other deductions such as credit union dues etc. and then turn around when questioned about it and say, so what? It is not the Council alone that owes these entities as if to say that it is ok to break the law if others are doing same.
But who is really being penalized? Not the Council but rather the poor employees who cannot enjoy medical benefits, or acquire loans from their Credit Union etc.
The Georgetown Municipality is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.
Sincerely
Anu Bihari

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