Dear Editor,
I note with tremendous excitement and I dare say, some degree of optimism that an inquiry has been launched at City Hall. In my view such an inquiry is long overdue and should include the functioning of the City Engineer’s Department. I am a 76-year-old aggrieved senior citizen who has been the victim of the City Engineer’s Department, and I stand ready to testify before an inquiry in respect to what in my opinion is the abuse of power by that department.
The specific matter I refer to had its genesis in the construction of a lean-to on a property which is immediately east of one owned by me at the same address. This lean-to protrudes directly onto my property. I strenuously objected to it, first to the owner and subsequently to the City Engineers’ Department without any action being taken. The owner is a businessman.
In May, 2007, Mr Desmond Trotman of the WPA wrote to the Mayor of Georgetown, Mr Hamilton Green on my behalf and apprised him of the development. To his credit Mr Green carried out an inspection of the premises on June 11, 2007. Mr Trotman was invited by the Mayor to witness the inspection. At the time of the visit the Mayor was accompanied by Ms Beverly Johnson, the City Engineer (ag) and a number of her officers and he was advised by Ms Johnson in Mr Trotman’s presence that the businessman was in violation of the bylaws. Ms Johnson further advised the Mayor that the businessman had been written to by the City Engineer’s Department notifying him about the violation and he had been instructed to break it down. She also told the Mayor that in light of his refusal to act on her department’s notification to him the onus was now on the council to instruct her to dismantle the offending structure. The Mayor there and then told Ms Johnson that he as head of the council was instructing her to dismantle the structure by the latest, June 16, 2007.
To date, more than a year later, the dismantling has not been done. Instead, Ms Johnson (1) has informed me that Mayor Green cannot instruct her to do anything, something she had not told him at the time he had issued his instructions to her; and (2) she has ordered me to dismantle a shed that was constructed on the eastern side of my property many years ago, as part of rehabilitation works which were approved in a plan I had submitted to the council in 1987.
The officers in the City Engineer’s Department of the Georgetown Municipality are so indecent that they are now claiming that the shed, part of the approved rehabilitation works to my house that were done in 1987, which were inspected and sanctioned during the period when they were being done, have now been deemed to be in violation of the businessman’s (my neighbour’s) space.
Incidentally, my neighbour only acquired his portion of the property some time after 2001. My late husband and I have owned our part for more than fifty years.
Without consulting with Mr Trotman I am sure he will make himself available to testify on this issue before an investigating team.
If this council is to regain any of its lost credibility it needs to conduct the most comprehensive investigation into the functioning of its administrative arms.
I hope, as I am sure countless other citizens in Georgetown also do, that those in authority will seize this opportunity to undertake the kind of investigation, the results of which should redound to the benefit of the council, its workers and the citizens of Georgetown.
Yours faithfully,
Isha E. Omrow
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to City Engineer, Ms Beverly Johnson, for any comments she may have wished to make, and received no response.
