One has to ask the question, is this really a capital city or is it a dumpsite? What is it that the movers and shakers of this land can’t see, but which assaults the visual cortex – and the nostrils –of even the humblest citizen? Of course, the Minister of Local Government and most of his cohorts do not live in Georgetown, but are safely ensconced in an area on the East Coast, where presumably there are no piles of rotting refuse deposited on their manicured parapets or piled up in every available green space. And presumably they do not have to go to sleep at night with the smell – if not of garbage – of smoke from the fires set by desperate residents burning their rubbish. And when they do deign to come into the city to work, no doubt it is in hermetically sealed, air-conditioned gas-guzzlers, which insulate them from the decaying reality of the streets around. It is true the President and Prime Minister live in Main Street, but the former hardly lingers in this country to be truly conscious of his surroundings, and the latter appears to play only a minor role in governmental affairs nowadays anyway.
In our Thursday editorial we made reference to the fact that Georgetown is the victim of a political game, and that those who could fix things “care more about scoring political points… and could not care less about the threat being posed to public health or to the environment.” While this was not spelt out in the leader, everyone knows the identity of those who could fix things but do not: it is quite simply the government. If ever there was a case for radical local government reform, then Georgetown is it.
As we pointed out on Thursday too, the Mayor and City Council – whatever its shortcomings, and no one is denying those – simply does not have enough guaranteed revenue to discharge its most basic functions. And the government knows this, but still has vetoed every revenue-generating scheme the M&CC has ever put forward. It prefers to play deus ex machina, intervening periodically with financial assistance to relieve a ‘crisis.’ Everyone knows how this particular game is played.
In an attempt to amass some money to meet its debts to its garbage contractors who have withdrawn their services until they are paid, the M&CC is trying the amnesty route again for defaulting ratepayers. Even if this strategy is reasonably successful, it will not make an impact until sufficient funds have trickled in to enable payments to the contractors to be made. And it is not the long-term solution to what, as said above, is a permanent budget deficit in the city. Even if we get to the point where local government reform as it pertains to fiscal transfers actually reaches the statute books, presumably that will not relieve the situation until after the local government elections. In the meantime, there is ample space for a few more garbage crises.
The council is doubly hamstrung in terms of garnering funds, because in practice it does not have an effective sanction against delinquent rate-payers. Prior to 1989, it had parate execution, but since then that remedy has been employed in only a few cases. The reason for this was spelt out by attorney-at-law, Mr Leon Rockliffe, in a letter to this newspaper published on November 19, 2007. The source of the problem, he explained, was the passing in 1988 of the Municipal and District Councils (Amendment) Act and the Local Government (Amendment) Act. He said the legislation was well meaning, but “its cumbersome provisions to thwart predatory bidding had the untoward effect of stultifying the parate execution process for rate recovering, so that little record can be found of any execution sales of that type after the year 1989. The entire system has since remained in a state of virtual paralysis.”
He went on to elaborate on various other impediments which exist in relation to the problem, which will not be reproduced here, and said: “It is clear that the existing legal situation calls for drastic executive action, firstly in removal or attenuation of the paralytic effects of the Amendment Acts of 1988 and a serious meeting of the entire Local Government body with the Registrars of Deeds, Lands and the High Court and with appropriate legal advice. There is no alternative to urgent executive action.”
Needless to say, urgent executive action was not taken following the publication of this letter, and almost certainly will not be taken before elections. So the M&CC is left with little leverage against private rate-payers. As for the government, it has not always set a good example to private home-owners where timely rate-paying is concerned. At the present time, PRO of the council, Mr Royston King told this newspaper on Friday that the M&CC was currently in negotiations with it about the payment of its rates for the third quarter since these have now become due. It may well be, therefore, that the residents of the capital will only get relief from the mountain of garbage when the administration condescends to pay up.
The government has no more excuses. It complained about corruption at the M&CC, when it had the power all the time to act against this if it wanted. It complained about the performance of the council’s officers, when it was the Ministry of Local Government which had the power to discipline and dismiss them, not the council. As it was, it took years before it eventually moved against two of them. More recently, it finally sent in Mr Keith Burrowes to undertake a full inquiry into the council’s operations and financial dealings. The government, therefore, holds all the cards in relation to the municipality, and always has held them.
The citizens of Georgetown are past playing silly games. There can be no more pulling of wool over their eyes that the M&CC is primarily to blame for the latest rubbish crisis when the central administration has ensured that the council is always starved of funds. Is this latest bit of nonsense the ruling party’s feeble attempt to try and get an interim management committee installed before the local government elections, as a letter-writer in the Guyana Times proposed yesterday? One hopes not, because if that is the level of their thinking it would betray a total cynicism and indifference to the health and welfare of the residents of this city.
If the government really wants to demonstrate it has any concern at all for the single largest aggregation of people in the country, let its ministers come out of their airtight vehicles and stand on a road corner for a few moments to take in the ugliness and the stench. Then when the reality that everyone else lives with has hit them, let the relevant member of cabinet put in train immediately the arrangements to pay the M&CC the third quarter rates. After that there needs to be some discussion with the council about how to avoid this situation arising again before the elections – and there too it is the government which would have to take the initiative with some kind of safety net.
The current situation with the garbage is nothing short of a national disgrace; it is evidence that the administration has no respect for the city, no respect for the people and no respect for itself.
