Clearly, the City Council is unable to formulate or implement policies

Aug 26, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

I believe that it is important that the people of Guyana, particularly the citizens of Georgetown appreciate the enormity of the task faced, and understand the considerable efforts being undertaken by the Local Government Commission as they seek to fix the broken local government system of Guyana.
If one were to just focus on the challenges they face with the Georgetown Municipality, one would have to be extremely grateful for their efforts so far. Georgetown is the textbook definition of a ‘failed city’ just as there are failed states promulgated to around the world. Georgetown is composed of feeble and flawed departments. Up until the LGC recently appointed a new Town Clerk, the administration barely functioned having lost their capacity and professional independence. Georgetown suffers from crumbling infrastructure, and an environment of flourishing corruption.
Clearly, the City Council is unable to formulate or implement policies to effectively build infrastructure and deliver proper and necessary municipal services to the citizenry. Yet, we hear the Mayor and some Councillors trying their level best to have some of those same officers who were removed by the LGC for lack of proficiency returned to their posts to further disintegrate the municipality to the point where they become completely incapable of providing even the most basic of functions and services to the citizenry?
With very short memories, the Council seems to have forgotten that the very person(s) they are championing to lead the administration of the Council, were subject along with others to some very harsh reproval and denunciation by the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) that was ordered by the previous Local Government Commission (LGC).
Indeed, the Mayor and City Council should be made to answer why a few handpicked officers were consistently given special funding and grants for prodigious amounts to undertake special courses for their personal upliftment and empowerment, whilst other staff in dire need of assistance for medical attention, for family emergencies etc. was callously denied. Discrimination of the highest order is practiced at City Hall.
Sitting in at their statutory meetings, seems like being at a comedy club. The Mayor and Councillors seem much more interested in attacking, assaulting and demeaning a young woman trying to make a difference and to do a job that she was legitimately appointed to execute, rather than fixing the many woes of the city.
Seemingly unaware that the regulations that govern the Georgetown Municipality which dictate that the signatories to their bank accounts must be the City Treasurer and the Town Clerk, they inanely proceeded to appoint Tom, Dick and Harrylall at their last statutory meeting, as the new signatories to their account. A drollery at best.
The Local Government Commission must move resolutely to further their task of saving the sinking ship of City Hall, by making other much-needed appointments, by dismantling the systems of nepotism and cronyism so endemic at City Hall and by ensuring that there is justice and fair play at the Council. I say to the LGC ‘Slow fire ah boil hard cow-heel.’
Yours truly,
Debra Gibson

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