Dear Editor,
It was with considerable disgust that I read a missive appearing in the letters columns of the newspapers recently, which seems to be nothing more than a vulgar attempt to disparage two sitting City Councillors, which has the name of the Council’s Public Relations Officer subscribed to it as its author.
I believe that this is the only country where a public servant would seek to, and get away with, ridiculing two members of its Board using the public media. And make no mistake about it, the elected Councillors are the employers of this officer and constitute the Board or city government of Georgetown.
Have the rules, policies and standard operational procedures become so unravelled at City Hall, that an officer can casually run to the press to publicise what she perceives as transgressions by Councillors, rather than reporting them to the Mayor, the Communities Minister or the Local Government Commission?
But more galling than the patent disrespect shown by this action, is the manifest duplicity and hypocrisy being practiced by this officer. Why only now “up from the ashes of the Georgetown Municipality has the Public Relations Officer arisen”? She was right there as Press Officer when the former Town Clerk was constantly harried, persecuted and assaulted by the preceding Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown and did nothing. She was right there when attempts were made by the previous Council to lock the former Town Clerk out of her office, when pickets and vulgar demonstrations against her including a fake funeral service with an effigy were organised by them, when a microphone was snatched from the former Town Clerk’s hand in the midst of a statutory meeting by a Councillor, and she was chased out of the Council’s Chamber and out of her office and compound with chants of “we had enough,” “time to go” and “get out the place.” The present Public Relations Officer failed to lift a pen or even a finger in the defence of a lady like herself, but now she is so fired up. Why? I end with the famous line in Martin Carter’s poem “…all are involved, all are consumed”.
Sincerely,
Anu Bihari
