City Hall neglects its responsibilities

Jun 07, 2018 Letters

Dear Editor,
We can easily say that the history of mankind is the history of delusions. More trendy has been the concept of fake news which consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print or broadcast news media or online social media.
The Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown would seem to be the authors, architects and experts in Guyana of fake news, alternative facts and in disseminating outright fabricated and misleading information.
The most recent example is the declared intention by the Town Clerk of the Council to charge owners and operators of heavy duty vehicles who operate in Georgetown, a fee which they claim would go towards the repair and maintenance of the roads in our capital.
According to the Council, the heavy duty single axle trucks are contributing to road fatigue, stress and the destruction of Council roads in many parts of the city which is the Council’s responsibility. And that is where the facts end.
In an effort to institute yet another burdensome tax on the citizenry he goes on to say that the Council has a narrow revenue base which, coupled with an unwillingness of some property owners to pay their rates, conspires to restrict the Council’s ability to repair and maintain roads.
More alarmingly, he further says that the City Council is contemplating an approach to benefit from licensing of vehicles in the city, as he believes that because it is the Council’s statutory responsibility to build and maintain roads that they must also have a corresponding right to access a percentage of the revenue obtained through licensing of vehicles that use Council roads and all connected facilities. On the surface this sounds plausible, but is furthest from reality.
The Town Clerk fails to point out that the Council has failed to build, maintain or even patch a road in well over two decades abdicating its responsibility and handing same over squarely to the central government who receives the proceeds of the road licences and therefore it would be unreasonable to expect central government to hand over the road licence fees to the Council whilst having to maintain the roads themselves.
The Town Clerk fails to highlight the fact that included in the property rates collected from corporate and residential property owners is a percentage that should go towards road building as has been the case since 1812 until about 25 years ago when they just capriciously stopped building and maintaining roads in the city.
The Town Clerk deliberately overlooks the fact that even if given the additional financial resources, that the Council lacks the resources both in terms of skilled road builders, structural engineers and the machinery to build and maintain modern bitumen roads.
Road construction methods have changed a lot since the sixties and seventies when stones were laid in a regular, compact design, and covered with smaller stones to produce a solid layer then covered with tar. Will the Council be purchasing motor graders, asphalt mixing plants, road roller machines, crawler excavators, forklift trucks, wheel loaders, and truck cranes when it has not even purchased a garbage truck, or a stray animal catching vehicle in over thirty years?
It is time that the Town Clerk stops making statements that are demonstrably untrue and contrary to well-known and accepted facts. These falsehoods further undermine the already flagging public confidence in the City Council and increases public cynicism with regard to the Georgetown Municipality.
Sincerely
Modi Sankar

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