Chairman of the Commission of Enquiry into the operations of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) Keith Burrowes has told the Stabroek Business that while it is desirable that businesses honour their legal obligation to pay rates and taxes to the municipality, the argument regarding the commensurate responsibility of M&CC in the discharge of its services is also entirely valid.
Stabroek Business has conducted a series of interviews with Burrowes with a view to monitoring the implementation of recommendations contained in the report of the Commission of Enquiry. His assertions regarding the mutual responsibilities of the M&CC and the business community are contained in a summary of some of the financial problems confronting the municipality and the reasons behind those problems.
“The argument has been made that the withholding of taxes by some entities comes out of the very real credibility concerns which the City Council has been plagued with in recent years,” Burrowes says. “Why, the argument goes, should hard-working business people put their money into an entity that has clear problems of accountability? The problem with this line of argument is that it takes us in the direction of a slippery slope, a sort of Catch 22 quagmire that provides no real solutions.”
Noting that revenue is crucial to the viability of the municipality, Burrowes says this has exponential repercussions for the achievement of its M&CC goals. “A $10 million shortfall in rates and taxes collection can very well translate into $100 million in lost time and degradation of facilities that those outstanding monies could have maintained. Conversely, a $10 million payment into the city’s coffers means that officers are paid, the refuse collection contractors don’t go on strike and millions that would have been spent on remedial efforts would have been saved.”
Burrowes asserts that while the outcomes of the Commission of Enquiry which he headed makes no secret of the delinquencies of the M&CC, he believes, nonetheless, that “the corporate community should be more acutely aware that financial resources are the life-blood of any entity operating within a modern, open economy. To shun or otherwise thwart their statutory obligation to pay rates and taxes to the municipality is to consciously contribute to the non-viability of the city’s operations.”
He says, however, that he should be “quick to add” that the insistence that the corporate community honours their obligations to the City Council must be accompanied by assurances that the council can provide those services for which the business community pays and to which it is entitled. “That is why what we seek to do in our current implementation role is to take concrete steps to ensure the proper functioning of a municipality that is effectively run and free of the stigma of corruption. As it happens, while the further advancement of these initiatives are based on the city’s ability to attract revenue, many of those responsible for the provision of the major part of that revenue believe that the efficiency and transparency need to be in place before they pay,” Burrowes says.
Evidently discomfited by what he regards as a “chicken and egg” situation that underpins the differences between the business community and the city, Burrowes alludes to the limitations confronting City Hall in the enforcement of its rates and tax collection responsibilities. “The reason that the supposed conscientious withholding of taxes is not applied in other entities is simply because there are direct methods of sanction available to those entities for those found in default. For example, while the Guyana Power and Light Company has not been without its own fair share of problems with regard to management, no company is going to withhold payment on their electricity bill on the argument that GPL’s management system is flawed, because its power is going to be cut off. The same goes for GWI and – though the case is not quite the same – GT&T,” Burrowes says.
On the other hand the Commission Chairman says that municipal sanction against defaulting ratepayers involves, not the flipping of a switch but a tenuous legal process, a situation which, in the absence of a municipal court does nothing to resolve the problem.
Burrowes says that currently the city’s administration and its corporate citizens “appear to exist in different hemispheres when it comes to the execution of corporate civic responsibility – whether on the issue of tax-paying or a deeper engagement with the city’s affairs. A disengaged corporate citizenry is untenable if our capital is to progress, indeed, if it is to stem its decline.”
Last week, newly reelected Presi-dent of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Komal Ramnauth told Stabroek Business that the chamber’s focus on the full and effective implementation of its Code of Conduct which includes insistence on statutory payments by its members also covers rates and taxes, a pronouncement that holds out some measure of hope of a changed posture on the part of the business community towards City Hall. Some weeks ago Burrowes told Stabroek Business that part of the focus of City’s Hall’s implementation committee is on building bridges with its stakeholders “to ensure the mutual discharge of obligations and responsibilities on all sides.
