Local Govt. Minister and City Mayor in tussle over garbage build-up

Jul 06, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Sonia Parag on Thursday fired back at the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) for its failure to have garbage collected from certain communities in the city for several weeks.

In a statement, the Minister reminded City Mayor Alfred Mentor that “Central Government has never been responsible for garbage collection. That is the responsibility of the municipalities and the Local Democratic Organs.”

Minister Parag also called out Opposition Member of Parliament, Coretta McDonald for what she considers to be false statements relative to the responsibility of the Ministry.

“This is absolute nonsense,” Minister Parag asserted while noting that “Coretta McDonald is clearly a stranger to the Municipality Act, and she, like many of her colleagues, is speaking from a place of utter ignorance.”

Minister Parag clarified that government subventions are legally designated for municipal capital projects, and not for garbage collection.

“That is what rates and taxes are for, and those monies are collected and handled by the respective city councils and NDCs (Neighbourhood Democratic Councils), not the government,” the minister explained.

The Local Government Minister said that the M&CC has not been audited for approximately 20 years and as a result cannot account for how the city’s revenues are expended.

“We don’t know how much monies they collect and what they do with those monies, but it is clearly not being used to develop Georgetown and improve the lives of its residents,” Parag said in the statement.

Notwithstanding this, the Minister said that government has still been intervening to clean up the city and bring relief to residents.

“We most definitely have to intervene. We cannot allow people to suffer for weeks without garbage collection,” Minister Parag added while referencing the state of Albouystown, an affected community.

“The truth speaks for itself…We have rehabilitated most of the roads in that community. We turned what was an unsightly garbage dump at ‘Punt Trench’ dam into a spanking new boulevard which creates a beautiful space for recreation, and importantly, it significantly raises the value of that community,” Minister Parag stated.

Minister Parag made it clear that the utterances made by Mayor Mentore at a press conference on Wednesday were “absolutely untrue.” She said that the slothful collection of garbage is no fault of the government.

The Minister said matter-of-factly that the landfill site at Eccles, East Bank Demerara (EBD) has had a daily average intake of 140 truckloads of garbage for the longest while, with no complaints received or disruptions reported.

“And that has not changed, so I’m not sure what they are talking about,” Minister Parag said.  Further, she noted that although the Georgetown M&CC has several pro-government councilors, none of them are on the Council’s Solid Waste Management Committee.

“These are all APNU+AFC Councilors that have been responsible for cleaning up the city. They are the ones that have been putting this city at a disadvantage for all these years,” the Minister noted.

On Wednesday, the City Mayor blamed an errant contractor for the build-up of garbage around the city. At a press conference he hosted, Mayor Mentore said that the Council, Councilors and the administration of City Council are not to be blamed.

“The contractor is Guyana Waste Solutions, who have been having human resource problem. He has problems with drivers; he has problems with general staffing. To some extent his trucks have issues. But he has been the one, who is most culpable, and is probably one of the reasons we are here today,” Mentore disclosed.

Taking this into account, the City Mayor further revealed that serious measures would be taken against contractors who fail to meet the obligations of the contract.

Mentore continued, “…Yes, we would have to take steps as to how we treat with the contractor, if we have to replace them. Yes, we did made recommendation at the last Council meeting that we will deal with this issue here, where we will try to fill that void of getting it up to speed.”

The Mayor said that the Council will meet on Monday to discuss the errant contractors.

“We will not be taking that blame because we are paying handsomely to get this job done.” Mentore said.

Meanwhile, the City Solid Waste Management Director, Walter Narine said that six percent of the garbage collection was contracted.  He explained that the Council has 15 constituencies, 12 of which are contracted.

Cevons Waste Management is responsible for five constituencies, Guyana Waste Solution Inc, another five, Sand-Sip Disposal Service has one, Puran Brothers has another, and the Solid Waste Management Department is managing three constituencies.

Furthermore, Narine revealed that due to the rainy season for the past month, the disposal of garbage has been a challenge.

“Now the pit, the cell actually where they dispose the garbage in, it became very muddy and silky, so when the trucks get in there…you actually can’t see the wheels anymore when you go in with the garbage,” Narine said.

He continued, “So when they dispose the garbage and they come out, the majority of the time they come out with punctured tires because we don’t know what is at the bottom there, sometimes the truck got stuck, and they have to get the excavator to stop their work and push them out, so this challenges we have experience.”

The communities of East La Penitence, North East La Penitence, West Ruimveldt, East Ruimveldt, Middle Road La Penitence, and Independence Boulevard have not had garbage collected for the past two to three weeks.

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• Alfred Mentore, garbage build-up, Mayor, Sonia Parag, tuffle

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