City Hall and the garbage disposal issue: An excursion into the absurd

The behaviour of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) would appear to be drifting from the erratic to the bizarre. Indeed, it may well have arrived at a point where one could be forgiven for thinking that it is now altogether unmindful of its public image.

In its editorial of a week ago, this newspaper sought to point to the dichotomy between the long-suffering nature of the two waste disposal service providers, Puran Brothers and Cevon’s Waste Management, which entities, between them, are owed in excess of $250 million by the Georgetown municipality, on the one hand and the seeming indifference of City Hall to the magnitude of the debt on the other. Frankly, there is something bizarre, to say the least, about the two companies having to resort to threats of strike action in order to press their case for what, in the circumstances, is a debt owing to them by City Hall that is both legitimate and enormous.

Well, it seems that the M&CC has responded to their threat of strike action, albeit not in the manner that one would associate with a contrite debtor. What the Director of Solid Waste has said is that the municipality will now be ‘pulling’ the garbage disposal contracts, which the two companies had held up to last Sunday, for large sections of Georgetown and its environs.

One imagines that the move by City Hall is designed to forestall the actualization of the threatened strike though it has to be said that there is something crude, tasteless and unprofessional about the manner in which the message has been delivered.

If it is highly likely that the two waste disposal companies have just about reached the end of their tether with having to ‘throw a box’ with the city over a protracted period, there is no telling whether there might not still be room for negotiating an incremental solution that circumvents the option of withdrawal of services.

Rather than pursue that option, it would appear that the M&CC has opted for an act of brinkmanship in the form of a curt letter to its creditors withdrawing most of its refuse-collection contracts. The real significance of this move reposes in the letter’s implied message that there may be no short-term solution, partial or otherwise, to the settling of the debt. That, frankly, is a posture that may well considerably offend the service providers particularly since there is the option of seeking help from central government. After all, however much we ‘carry on’ about the independence of the municipality from government, the bottom line is that when it comes to a choice between central government baling City Hall out and Georgetown and its environs  having to face the consequences of a garbage strike, there is really no choice at all.

There is more. How can we be sure–given its track record–that City Hall may not simply be cutting its nose to spite its face insofar as its capacity to directly service those wards which it has now taken back from Puran Brothers and Cevon’s Waste Management?  Further, what happens if the service providers now decide that City Hall can have all of the its garbage disposal contracts back until its debts are settled? The million dollar question, of course, has to do with whether the City can provide the quality of garbage disposal service which the capital requires over a period of time.

There are two other points to be made here. First, we find it passing strange that while the issue of garbage disposal and urban sanitation is critical to the interests of the business community none of the major business support organizations (BSOs) have made a substantive comment on this matter. This point is being made in the context of the stakeholder issue that arises here. City Hall alone does not have the right to call the shots, so to speak, in the matter of urban solid waste disposal and specifically in the matter of the cleanliness of the city.  That, decidedly, is a collective responsibility. Put differently, the relative quiet of the business community (and government, for that matter) on this issue up until now might easily be construed as an abdication of responsibility.