Dear Editor,
As our community and I battle to preserve a strip of land that was allocated to us for community purposes some years ago, we face an administration at City Hall that seems to little appreciate the importance of open space and land for our children, cultural activities and recreation. We must thank the Mayor for standing by us in this struggle.
We noticed in the Stabroek News editorial on Tuesday, titled, ‘Mayor Green and the future of the Georgetown municipality.’ It is a worthwhile analysis, and we agree that Mayor Green has been rather combative, but it is this same style and personality which earned him the nickname, ‘Action Green’ when he had so much done as Prime Minister and Minister of Works.
The criticisms in the editorial are in order, but the bottom line is, there is not much one can achieve without good management and money. The Mayor has been complaining to the point where we are all fed up about the suffocation by the state apparatus in these two vital areas. I recall a full page advertisement some years ago, which the Council had in the media. It drew attention to the fact that the government-controlled IMC which managed the city had said, “Taxes alone could not provide adequate services and that new sources of revenue were required to provide citizens with a reasonable service.”
The city council is responsible for many things including roads, day care centres, drainage, a cemetery, abattoir and street lighting, among other things. As a former City Councillor, I attend statutory meetings at times, and none of the proposals to raise funds made by the Mayor were accepted by government.
In 2000, a plan was prepared for the future development of Georgetown; it was accepted by Cabinet, but no effort was made by central government to implement that change. It took almost ten years, and only after the Burrowes Report referred to in the editorial, that inept, senior officers were given their marching orders. Left to the Mayor, I know he would have dealt condignly with misdemeanors.
The fact that garbage is not being collected in my area is a direct result of council’s inability to raise funds. Having said that, I do not think the Mayor and City Councillors can escape some responsibility for the sorry state of Georgetown. But given all the circumstances and what takes place in the name of democracy and free speech at the council’s statutory meetings, and the letting of the cat out of the bag statement by one government Minister, that he would be glad if there is a crisis in the city, the question is, how much blame should we apportion to the Mayor and Councillors whose hands are tied?
For we recall the years spent haggling over local government reform, and we get the impression that the government is not interested in a municipality as important as Georgetown being given some flexibility and the tools to get a very difficult job done.
The time has come for us to call a spade a spade and end this frustration, with government and stakeholders agreeing without delay on the implementation of local government reform, or government saying to us, what some of us suspect to be the case, that the party in office has no interest in sharing power and acknowledging the higher principle of a local government system. It should admit that it wishes to run the country like a fiefdom managed from Freedom House.
Look at the government’s recent award of a $400-odd million contract to do roads in Georgetown without the involvement of the city council, which has machinery and manpower idle for lack of funds, and the history of poor road construction.
The time has come to relieve the citizens of Georgetown of this pain which they do not deserve.
Yours faithfully,
Winston Bentham
