Dear Editor,
Well once again the central government, like ‘a gallant knight in shining armour, has ridden in very chivalrously and saved the fair maidens at City Hall’ with another huge bailout. And maybe they had no choice as the garbage was piling up all over the city, the workers have still not been paid for the month of November and the council’s other creditors are shouting for relief.
But this recurring pattern has become all too familiar; the council rakes in tens upon tens of millions of dollars monthly from shipping containers, ratepayers, stallholders, vendors, hairdressers, barbers, eating houses, slaughterers, etc, and then fritters it away on expensive overseas trips, on paying for bodyguards, chauffeurs, personal assistants, anniversary celebrations and 19 different allowances for the fat cats.
They choose not to pay their employees’ salaries, pensions or gratuities, do not pay the contractors, nor the Guyana Revenue Authority, nor the National Insurance Scheme, nor the labour or credit unions. They choose not to pay their water rates nor electricity charges. They take goods from every conceivable source and refuse to pay. Why don’t they give the pink slip to the more than 200 friends, relatives and church pals that they employed recently, causing the top heavy payroll?
Why do they do this? Because they know that the central government will rush and settle their liabilities. It’s like calling in the cavalry. But one would have thought with the recent findings of the Commission of Inquiry, a most damning report, that central government would have, at the very least, waited until the council’s books were audited and until the immoral councillors and officers had left before giving the city a red cent. It amounts to throwing our money into a black hole!
Yours faithfully,
Shanta Singh
