The blighted Georgetown city council will enter 2007 still deep in debt amounting to millions of dollars and owing a part of its work force for outstanding wages and benefits due last year.
This council still owes the bank some $70M – this is in an overdraft – while there are outstanding payments to the garbage contractors amounting to millions.
The acting city treasurer has been able to convince the Jagdeo administration that there are good reasons for it to pay over next year’s subvention, which has been increased, to meet the municipality’s liabilities for 2006.
At the last statutory meeting of the council held on Wednesday last, the recent strike and the attitude of the leadership of the Guyana Labour Union, which represents municipal workers once again attracted the attention of the city ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’.
The council is standing firm that there will be no money for those workers who went on strike in late December.
People’s National Congress Reform councillor Oscar Clarke has argued that it would be illegal and immoral for the council to pay these workers.
He suggested that the council call in the union leadership for talks because the time has come to take an in-depth look at the way the council does its business.
Don’t blame me
In a paid advertisement in the daily newspapers headlined `Facts every citizen should know about the Georgetown municipality
