Over 140 city businesses owe M&CC taxes – Mayor

Over 100 city businesses proprietors have failed to pay taxes and according to Mayor Ubraj Narine, this results in the build-up of garbage in Georgetown.
Several photos began circulating on social media on Friday morning of overflowing bins throughout the capital city which saw City Hall coming in for a massive backlash.
However, at a press conference later on Friday, Mayor Narine revealed that the overflow was as a result of damages to the tyres of the lone tractor owned by the City Council.
A replacement of the tyres is difficult to obtain locally, he said, which saw the garbage bins throughout Georgetown being left unattended for the past three days. Further, it is expensive to buy new tractors, the Mayor said.
The Mayor then lambasted some 144 “high-end businesses” in Georgetown which have failed to pay their taxes and who owes City Hall billions.
According to Narine, City Hall is willing to procure two additional tractors, however, this is difficult since the finances are unavailable.
“There is only one tractor we have at this moment to remove all those skip bins and that tractor is currently down…however, we can do better but only if we get the resources from the taxpayers then we would be able to have two more tractors. There is a list with 144 business entities that due us tax and if these taxes can be paid up to the City Council we will get the additional tractors so that we will be able to do a better job…they owe us billions, these high-end businesses,” Narine revealed.
The Mayor is urging the businesses to pay up monies owed, which will make the work of City Hall less strenuous, since according to Deputy Mayor Alfred Mentor, the monies for the tractor cannot be obtained from the Communities Ministry.
“This is a teamwork, this is a job that the ratepayers themselves, especially those in the commercial community, has to do…we just can’t be going to the religious communities and tapping the Central Government resources to be able to get these other machineries There are allocation of funds in the subvention that we will use to buy some other machineries but there are other departments that also have needs and we have already allocated funds for those things so it is very important for the business community to play their part,” Mentor urged.
Director of Solid Waste, Walter Narine, however, said efforts were being made to have the skip bins cleared.
He reiterated the Mayor and Deputy Mayor’s call, noting that the City Council is doing its part and as such, he implored businesses to do theirs.
“These waste primarily comes from the business community and we are expending a lot of resources and time to clean up waste in the business communities. We have a business truck that traverse the business community every morning, we have street orderly that walks the street to clean up garbage, we put those bins at those locations because before those bins, you had mountains of garbage every single day in front of those businesses.”
He added that the businesses which are not paying their taxes are putting tremendous pressure on the municipality’s finances.