City Hall and the threatened garbage disposal faceoff

The Stabroek News’ account of the ongoing brouhaha between City Hall and the two waste disposal contractors, Puran Brothers and Cevons Waste Management, over the former’s liabilities to the two service providers would surely have been hilarious had the whole sorry tale not graphically exposed the fact that the recent Local Government Elections that had been held forth in some quarters as a panacea for all the ills of the municipality will clearly not exorcise some of the long-standing demons that have haunted City Hall.

The first thing that should be said, of the incumbent City Hall administration course, is that the personages currently responsible for administering the city are pretty much the same officials who held office while the enormous amounts currently owing to the long-suffering contractors were racked up. City Hall’s persistent failure to honour its debts in a timely manner or at least to ensure that the arrears were kept to manageable proportions is a reflection of just how slipshod its general management regime, including the management of finances, has been over the years. Put differently, the enormous amounts owing to the two waste disposal companies is par for the course as far as City Hall’s management style is concerned. Even if one argues that at some point the management of the capital was costing way more than the city treasury could muster, that has to be balanced against the woeful ineptitude of the municipality in the collection of rates and, as well, against the persistent reports of profligate spending and corrupt practices at City Hall.

It appears too that the Town Clerk has become afflicted with an excessively exaggerated sense of humour when account is taken of his responses to this newspaper’s enquiries on the matter of the millions owing to the sanitation companies by the municipality. The figures provided in the newspaper report reveal that of a total of $265 million owing to the two service providers, $2.4 million was paid to them in equal parts some time recently in partial settlement of the respective outstanding amounts.

There is a certain casualness in the language chosen by Town Clerk Royston King to communicate the situation with regard to City Hall’s indebtedness. It gets worse. Frankly, quite how, in the face of multi-million dollar liabilities he could simply declare that the kitty is empty is unfathomable.

Even more hilarious, is that the Town Clerk descends into what appears to be a linkage between the city’s settlement of these debts and the implementation of the parking meter project. Here, there appears to be no consideration given to how the indebtedness to the hapless contractors will be settled if the Parking Meter project does not come through.

It has to be said that while the citizenry would have no stomach for a garbage strike and its attendant consequences for the capital, one simply must spare a thought for the two business owners whose outstanding payments date back to almost a year. How exactly (and this is a question for Mr King) are these service providers expected to continue to give service to the city—with all that that entails—plus meet their personal needs and those of their families?

If a withdrawal of service is indeed a worrying prospect that must be avoided at all cost the question surely arises as to whether a point has not now been reached where something simply has to give.

To say that a case may now appear to exist for central government to step up if only to put an end to the threat of a work stoppage is not the same as saying that City Hall deserves to be bailed out. Central government, after all, has just as big a vested interest in the capital as does City Hall. That, of course, leaves the question as to whether at any point in time in the foreseeable future we can anticipate an administration at City Hall that is properly equipped to manage the affairs of the capital. Or is it a case of the more things change the more they stay the same?