Recently, a senior member of the Georgetown City Council, who was also one of the four which went into the agreement with Smart City Solutions (SCS) to install parking meters in Georgetown, declared that come what may, parking meters will be installed in the city as it is within the Council’s legal right to do so. From the onset, we would suggest that officials of the City be more circumspect with regards to their public comments on the parking meters issue, which has sparked much controversy since its implementation in January 2017.
The Parking Meters Project was taken up by City Hall as a revenue generating measure. It has very little or nothing to do with traffic congestion since it was only part of the three or four streets in Downtown Georgetown where there is any congestion; and this occurs only at certain times of the day. This, as we all know, could be controlled and managed by the presence of more Traffic Police or the City Constabulary.
Parking meters in every part of the world are never imposed on downtown cities as a measure to raise money from commuters. They are imposed for traffic purposes and never to raid the pockets of owners and drivers of motor vehicles and other users of the road transport systems.
Important to note too is that the parking meter project has been rejected by most of the citizens and the entire business community. The Guyana Consumers Association (GCA), which speaks on behalf of all consumers, from the inception had pointed out that there is no social or economic justification for such a project to be imposed on the City and had called for the contract to be revised or scrapped altogether. On this basis, the GCA had listed several valid reasons why the project in its present form should be rejected.
For example, in the Contract between SCS and M &CC, SCS was allotted 80% of the returns and M&CC 20%. SCS would notionally have made an investment of US$10M while the City Council’s investment would have been the road system of Georgetown worth many billions of dollars plus the cost of continuously maintaining of the roads over the next 20 years of the Contract. In other words, SCS would have invested a minimal percentage of the cost of the Scheme but would have been collecting 80% of the revenues! If this project were to materialise, the Guyana side would be permanently disadvantaged for a first tranche of 20 years followed by another 20 years.
It should be mentioned that during the renegotiation of the contract, the subject of share profit and contractual obligations were discussed and it was agreed to have it remain the same being the 20/80 M&CC-SCS for a period of 20 years.
This also means that the owners of the Parking Meter Project would be harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars per year which would be sent abroad causing a constant drain of the foreign exchange of the country.
Additionally, the Parking Meter Scheme would cause businesses great losses. Their customer parking would be eliminated and the acceptance and delivery of goods at their premises would become more expensive and time-consuming. Any contraction of business could result in unemployment and increase in prices of some consumer goods.
By the contract, no other person could have a parking lot in Georgetown and even businesses that have their parking lots for their employees and vehicles may be affected. This giving of SCS a monopoly of parking in the city is unheard of in any other city in the world. Such a monopoly is iniquitous and deprives citizens of the use of their properties.
The citizens group which has been opposing the parking meters scheme has claimed that the contract is void because of a number of factors they have adumbrated, and they are prepared to test it in the Courts.
The authors behind the project must be fully cognizant that the overwhelming majority of the population of Georgetown as well as the tens of thousands who visit the City every day for business or pleasure are against parking meters. One is therefore left to ask why is City Hall so oblivious to the concerns of the majority.
