Workers from the City Engineer’s Department yesterday dismantled the frame of a wooden structure on Arapaima Street in Ruimveldt, which would have constituted an expansion for a car wash on the government reserve.
City Hall Public Relations Officer Debra Lewis told Stabroek News that the structure was illegal.
According to Lewis, the businessman Earl Fredericks, like many others,
was operating on the government reserve. She added that the expansion was removed as the city was attempting to reclaim and take control of spaces that were being used illegally. “We do not want the situation to get more out of control than it is already,” she added.
But Fredericks said that he had kept Mayor Patricia Chase-Green abreast with his development and was informed that he should not build to encroach on other open spaces, with which he had complied.
The businessman, who showed up after majority of the structure was removed, further said that he was only expanding higher to accommodate large trucks.
Meanwhile, a resident next door to Fredericks’s business, who was also in the process of expanding, began to take down his structure before the city workers got to him. The man met with supervising officer Eardley King and explained that he would take down his structure.
He admitted that he had received a notice informing him that his structure was illegal, but said he was waiting on the carpenter. However, when the city workers showed up yesterday, without the aid of a carpenter, he began to dismantle his structure.
City Hall last week launched a campaign to reclaim spaces in Georgetown which are illegally occupied.
On Wednesday last the city carried out an operation at Ram’s Auto Spares and Trucking Service located at Light Street, Alberttown during which several pieces of heavy-duty machinery and spare parts that were on the reserve around the business premises were removed.
The following day, a team including Town Clerk Royston King went to the corner of Sixth Avenue, Subryanville and Sheriff Street with several heavy-duty vehicles and removed a container and demolished a shed adjoining the Electronics City building on Sheriff Street.
