The system is not working

Aug 18, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – The local government system, and the regional administration that is supposed to support are not equipped to deal with the mandate that they are supposed to have. They do not possess the money, the machinery, or the authority to mobilise the resources required to remove the water from the land or to give substantial relief to the people, as for example is the case when a koker breaks away or when there is flooding due to excess rainfall and poor drainage.

This weakness is partly the consequence of a long dependence on central government. The Regional Democratic Councils, the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils and the municipalities have become creatures of the centre. They look upwards for money. They look upwards for permission. And when something goes wrong, the first instinct is to look upwards for someone to blame.

But central government is not the whole problem. There is another difficulty, more uncomfortable because it concerns the people themselves. If local government is to become real government, it must have its own revenues. The councils and municipalities must be able to collect enough money to maintain their roads, drains and canals, remove garbage and provide the ordinary services of a town. This means that people must pay for the government they want.

Here the difficulty begins.  The slightest suggestion of a new tax, or an increase in rates and taxes, produces protest. Everyone wants the services. Few want to pay for them. The contradiction has been allowed to continue for so long that it has become almost a principle of public life: government must provide, but somebody else must pay.

The rates and taxes paid by residential property owners are not enough even to meet the ordinary cost of garbage collection, much less the maintenance of roads, drains and canals and the many other responsibilities of local government. To compensate, the municipalities have leaned heavily on the business community. Businesses have become the dependable source of revenue because they are visible, identifiable and easier to tax.

The result is an arrangement that is neither fair nor sensible. Businesses carry a burden that becomes heavier with every new levy. And when a business falls behind, the penalties and accumulated interest can turn a manageable debt into something impossible. Yet the municipalities are reluctant to confront the underlying problem because businesses constitute such an important part of their revenue base. The system therefore feeds upon the very people whom it should be helping to keep productive.

A local government system cannot be healthy when one class of ratepayers is expected to carry another.

What is needed is a simpler and fairer system in which residential property owners and businesses contribute according to their proper share. At present, the imbalance is striking. Residential owners pay little, and it is said that as many as six out of every ten homeowners are in arrears. At the same time, businesses are pressed for more.

Meanwhile, there is another form of commercial activity that takes place in full view but contributes little to local government.

Vendors occupy the pavements outside established businesses. They pay a cleaning fee, often little more than a token. Yet they produce garbage, obstruct the pavements and make it more difficult for customers to enter the shops whose owners are paying rates and taxes. Some vendors park vehicles along the roads and sell from them. Others operate from caravans and roadside stalls. They use public space for private commercial purposes, but they are not treated as commercial taxpayers in the same way as the businesses with permanent premises.

A drive down Regent Street early in the morning is enough to see the absurdity. The vehicles appear. The stalls are erected. The pavements disappear. The drains become inaccessible. By the time the day has properly begun, the commercial district has been transformed into a bazaar in which the formal business is made to compete with the informal business immediately outside its door.

There is a certain mythology surrounding this vending: the vendor as the poor man trying to survive. Some are poor. But it is not possible to explain all of this activity in those terms. Some vendors possess several vehicles. Some have been in the trade for years. They are conducting businesses. They should therefore be treated as businesses.

The business community has a legitimate complaint. It cannot be expected to pay relatively high rates and taxes, construct its own flood barriers and maintain its premises while an unregulated competitor is allowed to conduct business immediately outside its doors.

There can be no serious discussion of a competitive private sector without first discussing the conditions under which that sector is required to compete.

The British colonial authorities understood something about drainage that appears to have been forgotten. They constructed a system designed to carry away the rainfall that was expected in a country such as Guyana. The drains were not necessarily deep. They worked because they were maintained. They were cleared. They were weeded. They were swept.

It may be that Guyana does not require another grand engineering scheme to solve every instance of flooding. It may require something more ordinary and, for that reason, more difficult: maintenance.

Sweepers. Cleaners. Weeders. Men and women who clear the drains before they become blocked. There is nothing modern about this. But it worked.

The problem is that even this simple task has become difficult. How is a drain to be cleaned when, from early morning, vendors have placed their pallets and merchandise over it? How does a municipality maintain a drainage system that has been made inaccessible by the very activities it is supposed to regulate?

Everyone is therefore accommodated, except the system itself. The result is predictable. Local government remains short of money. Because it is short of money, it remains dependent on central government. Because it is dependent on central government, it lacks the independence and capacity to respond decisively. And when the rain comes or a koker breaks away, the weakness becomes a national emergency.

(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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• Local government, Peeping Tom, system

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