It seems like all lines of communications are broken in the City Engineer’s Department

Jun 29, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is quite disturbing to know that our livelihood rests in the hands of the incompetent management of the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown, at a time when Georgetown is under threat by flooding. Is this the level of competency we must contend with when natural disasters can be threatening to our existence?
Guyana is faced with a national disaster, and all hands are on deck. Georgetown City in Region Four has a bit more control of the situation due to mechanisms in place but continues to suffer at the hands of the misfits at the Georgetown City Council. They Town Clerk (Ag) and City Engineer should be held accountable. The management of the Georgetown Municipality has failed us miserably – at this time playing ‘chess’ and blame it on the other is dated. The truth of the matter is that there are no proper systems of accountability and planning in place.
The Local Government Ministry and the Local Government Commission’s (LGC) should realise that the pump attendants, whose actions by now should have been investigated, are not the issue. It is the poor management that operates the Council like an outhouse. There are clear management issues, one of which is mismanagement of their human resources.
It requires simple cognition, routine checks, and observation, to ascertain how you should deal with an issue with mechanisms for drainage, such as pumps, sluices and drains. The country is flooding by natural causes, but the City of Georgetown’s flooding is anthropogenic, due to bad management of the pumps and sluices. It is the mismanagement of the organisation, that affords the management time to be petty and engage in everything else, but their duties aligned with their post.
H.E Irfaan Ali, President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana’s concerns are surely taken for granted. The Town Clerk and City Engineer show gross incompetence with their inability to investigate grievances surrounding the operations of the pumps in the city.
I am led to believe that this gross incompetence seriously affects the upward mobility of the Mayor and City Council. It is the Town Clerk’s and City Engineer’s responsibility to investigate any complaint concerning an employee, specifically the City Engineer when it is relative to a staff that falls under his department, especially one being made by the President.
The Town Clerk and City Engineer were present at a press conference held on 31st of May 2021, in the Council’s Chambers, when the City Engineer assured the public of an investigation, relating to the incident of the attendant caught napping. The onus is upon the Town Clerk to see that it was carried through as CEO. There is a functioning line of command within the Council, the pump attendant reports to the leading hand, the leading hand then reports to the drainage overseer, the drainage overseer reports to the engineer responsible for drainage, and the drainage engineer, reports to the City Engineer. It seems like all lines of communications are broken in the City Engineer’s Department, and the Town Clerk is mentally out of the jurisdiction.
I ask the Council if they still have the authority, since the Town Clerk seems to have given it away, to investigate and, since they are the elected political representatives in the City of Georgetown, to do what you can, or work with the LGC to remove the square pegs in round holes in the councils’ administration.
Yours truly,
Name provided

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News