The roads of Georgetown are not owned by the Georgetown City Council

Apr 07, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There is a peculiar habit in public life. It is the tendency to mistake custody for ownership. It is a small confusion, almost innocent at first glance, but like many small confusions it grows into a large misunderstanding.

Recently, the Government, in designating fifty-seven roads in Georgetown as public roads, has executed what the Georgetown City Council has labelled as a “hostile takeover” of City property. But the truth, as is often the case, is not so straightforward.

The roads of Georgetown are not owned by the Georgetown City Council. They never were. They are, in the plainest legal sense, public thoroughfares—arteries through which the life of the city flows. These roads do not belong to the Council. The Municipal and District Councils Act, which serves as the charter of municipal authority, is careful in its wording. It grants councils the power “to construct, maintain, repair, protect and carry out works for the betterment of Council roads… and to regulate and control traffic thereon.” These are important powers, certainly. They are the tools of stewardship. But they do not constitute ownership.

Ownership confers title, dominion, and the right to exclude. The Act does none of these. It does not say the Council owns the roads. It does not place the soil, the parapets, or the drains in its possession. Instead, it entrusts the Council with duties—practical, necessary, and often neglected duties—over infrastructure that remains, in essence and in law, public.

And so, when the Government moves to designate certain roads as public roads under the Roads Act, it is not seizing anything from the Council, for there is nothing there to seize. One cannot confiscate what another does not own. The phrase “hostile takeover,” so dramatic and so satisfying to the ear, collapses under the mildest scrutiny. It is a metaphor in search of a fact. This is not to say that the Council is without grievance. There is, perhaps, a case to be made about consultation. The absence of consultation, on this issue, may well offend the sensibilities of municipal governance, and rightly so. But offence is not the same as dispossession, and discourtesy is not equivalent to expropriation.

It would be comforting, in a way, if this were merely a misunderstanding—a simple mix-up of legal terms that could be cleared up with a patient reading of the statute. But the matter is complicated by the uneasy relationship between central government and local authorities. The PPPC has long exhibited a certain impatience with local government. It prefers direction over delegation. Its history is marked by periods in which local democratic organs were not so much supported as supplanted. They were replaced, at times, by Interim Management Committees (IMCs), bodies more agreeable to central control.  Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) that might have been strengthened were instead bypassed, their functions absorbed by the IMCs.

The PPPC prefers to build community roads, rather than give the resources to the NDCs to do so. It prefers to centralise much of the responsibilities for drainage and irrigation, outside of the towns, to the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority, rather than build capacity at the local level.

Central government domination contributes to the poverty of local capacity. It teaches local authorities to wait rather than to act, to request rather than to plan. It produces, over time, a culture of dependence, one in which councils stand, metaphorically, hat in hand, hoping for the next allocation. Over the past fifty years, it is difficult to identify leaders who consistently demonstrated a clear and principled commitment to local government. That distinction belongs to Mr. David Granger. Long before assuming the presidency, he campaigned with persistence for local government elections. When he did become President, he restored local government elections after they had been withheld from the population for 22 years under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic administration.

But the holding of local government elections has not created a properly devolved and empowered system of local government. This is why there is a practical irony to the government’s decision to designate 57 roads, in the city, as public roads. The Government’s decision may be driven by a desire to improve infrastructure in the capital, to make the city more hospitable to investment and tourism, including by the government’s close allies.

Yet in stepping in so decisively, the Government risks raising an awkward question in other towns: Why not here? Why not Anna Regina, or Corriverton, or Bartica, or New Amsterdam? A policy that appears bold in Georgetown may appear selective elsewhere. And selectivity has a way of breeding dissatisfaction. None of this absolves the City Council of its own failings. The condition of Georgetown did not arrive overnight. It is the cumulative result of years of mismanagement, neglect, and an inability to adapt. The Council has been given powers. Those powers are limited, yes, but sufficient to make a difference. And the Council has not always used them well.

In the end, the roads of Georgetown remain what they have always been: public ways, belonging to no single authority but to the common life of the city. The Government may regulate them, the Council may maintain them, and the citizens may complain about them, but none can claim them as private property. To speak of a “hostile takeover” is to mistake a change in roads’ administration for a change in their ownership.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• Georgetown, Georgetown City Council, Peeping Tom, roads

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