M&CC to soon meet garbage collectors to renegotiate contracts – Town Clerk

By Lakhram Bhagirat

The administration of the City of Georgetown is expected to begin meeting with garbage contractors Puran Brothers Disposal Inc and Cevons Waste Management Inc to renegotiate the terms of their contracts after December 31.
Town Clerk Royston King explained that the move was to ensure that garbage was collected in the city.

A few weeks ago, the M&CC had approached the Central Government through the Communities Ministry for a bailout of $475,635,245 to settle the city’s debt to Puran Brothers, Cevons and another company after they would have pulled their services owing to nonpayment. The bailout was granted, and Central Government decided to pick up the tab until December 31, after which the M&CC would step in.
King, at last Monday’s statutory meeting, informed that the municipality would be engaging the contractors with revised contracts.
“This means that during the budget discussion and considerations, we would have to reengage all of our contractors, including our solid waste contractor, and we will have to relook at the contracts we have with them with a view to going forward,” King informed.
He noted that the budget consideration would have to factor in all of the city’s expenses. King reminded the Councillors that the monthly average revenue collection cost between $70 million and $80 million, adding that the salary tab was just over $112 million.
“We have not yet addressed overheads and a number of other expenditure that we have to honour as a council…the budget considerations are important and that is when we will look at how to address that,” King stated.
Puran Brothers Disposal and Cevons Waste Management withdrew their services on July 30, 2017, as City Hall’s debts had risen to the multimillion-dollar range. According to the companies, the issue of non-payment has been a longstanding one, with many debts going back as far as 2015.
The two companies resumed garbage collection just last Sunday after the Government would have begun making payments to them.
Solid Waste Director Walter Narine had earlier stated that the two contractors would come back with reduced responsibilities. He said that the new arrangement would see each contractor being paid $10 million per month for their services as compared to the previous range of $43-45 million per month.
On September 1, the M&CC implemented fees for commercial waste collection. Small business operators are required to pay a $5000 monthly fee while medium businesses will pay $8000 per month. However, large business operators across Georgetown are required to pay the most significant figure of $12,000 per month for their waste collection.
The Solid Waste Director had told the Council that while the originally approved fees for commercial garbage collection were $5000, $10,000 and $15,000, the last two were reduced to $8000 and $12,000 after consultations.