Metered parking revisited

The citizens of Georgetown and other communities on Thursday last, came out in their numbers and have once again raised their voices against the Parking Meter Project; while some called for the rates to be reduced others demanded that the project to be scrapped entirely.
For many, the introduction of metered parking in the City of Georgetown was an extremely unpopular move by the Mayor and City Council (M&CC). The general consensus is that the project has been poorly conceived and implemented. This is the first time that we have ever witnessed this level of resentment for a project of such nature. This resentment and bitterness came from almost every stakeholder in society – the business sector, political parties, NGOs, citizens, etc.
Many believe that the entire fiasco could have been avoided in the first place, had the city officials approached the issue in a transparent and democratic manner; eg, by meaningfully engaging the necessary stakeholders they would have gotten a better understanding of the concerns of citizens before they ventured into such undertaking. While many have weighed in on the issue, the Guyana Consumers Association has also provided an alternative to be considered and have suggested several ways to approach this:
(1) The “amended” contract between Smart City Solutions and the Georgetown City Council must be immediately published for the citizens to know what is being placed on them for at least the next 20 years. There are many questions the citizens would like answered, for example, the quality of the technology of the meters; the updating of the technology; at the expiry of the Contract, what would be the scenario, and so on. If the contract is not published, an aura of corruption would envelop the scheme and would besmirch Government as well as City Hall.
(2) It should be emphasised that the meters should have been calibrated by a reputable company or institution and the results published. Unless calibration is done, the citizens would be distrustful of the honesty of the meters.
(3) The Feasibility Study must be published. This document will inform Government, the citizens and all stakeholders of the various projections to expect. Again, the publication of the feasibility would help to temper the deep-set assumption that the scheme is enveloped in secrecy and corruption.
(4) The profitability and profit-sharing of the scheme. In this scheme the main investment inputs are (a) The Georgetown road system (b) The enforcement of the scheme (c) The parking meters (d) The accountant. All other ancillary costs are minimal. The Guyana side is providing the road system which is worth billions of dollars and is by far the overwhelming part of the investment. It also seems to be mainly responsible for the enforcement. The Smart City Solutions Company will provide the meters which are very likely second-hand or the left-overs from the company’s other activities. Their accountant would mainly be to consolidate the money and send it abroad since the meters are self-accounting.
In this business plan, the Guyana side would be contributing 99 per cent of the input costs, while the company would only be contributing about 1 per cent, while collecting 80 per cent of the profits. The unfairness of these profit-sharing needs to be reviewed
(5) This Scheme would therefore be patriating large sums of foreign currency without generating any wealth locally and bringing greater pressure on the Guyana dollar. In this aspect of the contract, both the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Guyana should have been involved, since the M&CC would have made a commitment on their behalf without their knowledge.
(6) Any lowering of rates would not make the scheme acceptable since there are fundamental questions to be resolved. If these fundamental questions are not resolved, the scheme must be put on hold or scrapped.
(7) The Georgetown City Council claims that it went into this unfair and unacceptable contract because it needed money. The Council needs money largely because of its inefficiency and alleged corruption and to ask the citizens to pay for such inefficiency and corruption is not right.
These are reasonable demands being made on behalf of citizens and if taken on board and treated seriously, perhaps we could see an ease on the level of resentment to the project that currently exists.
Needleless to say, we have not yet addressed the issue of the regulation governing metered parking in the city, as that is currently being challenged on the basis of its legality in the courts.