The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is still unable to meet its financial obligations to the two companies contracted to collect garbage in the city, thus resulting in them continuing to withhold their services.

On Friday, Public Relations Officer of the M&CC Royston King said that despite its best efforts, the council was unable to discharge its financial obligations to the two companies. The council owes Cevon’s Waste Management Services and Puran Brothers Waste Disposal Services, a total of $75 million. Of this sum, $39 million is due to be paid.

The two companies terminated their services about a week-and-a-half ago.

King said the municipality is working hard towards rectifying the “unfortunate situation” as quickly as possible.

On Tuesday, the municipality announced that it had decided to grant a period of amnesty on interest to all rate-payers until September 30. King said that so far the response by property owners and rate-payers to this initiative had been good. According to him, even some businesses that were in arrears had come forward. However, he could not give a figure as to how much money had been collected since the amnesty was introduced.

King said the council would be moving to publish the names of those persons and business enterprises which owed the council money. He said similar exercises in the past had proved to be relatively effective. A recent exercise, he said, saw a response from about 60 per cent of those persons whose names had been published.

Meanwhile, King said the council was in negotiation with government to have it pay its rates for the third quarter of this year. He said the government had settled rates for the previous two quarters but the third quarter payment was now due.

When asked if this payment would help with the situation, he said while it would be of great assistance in the short term, the council would still have a long-term problem of earning adequate revenue to cover its expenses. He said the council would need the cooperation of all taxpayers, especially those who had not paid their rates in years. King said that even if persons did not have all the money now, they could go into the Treasurer’s Department and work out a payment plan.

In recent times, strike action by the garbage collection companies has become commonplace as the municipality is unable sometimes to pay these companies. When asked about a possible long-term solution to this problem, King said that the council had been considering providing garbage collection as a municipal service to the city employing the resources of the council. He said this had been done in the past but the M&CC had discontinued this practice years ago.

The PRO admitted that the restoration of such a service would be challenging and that it was dependent on the proper functioning of other connected systems.

He said that even now during the ongoing strike, the council, with its limited resources, had been collecting garbage from business areas and schools fairly efficiently.