Dear Editor,
The Georgetown Municipality must be the most paradoxical, twisted and bizarre entity in Guyana. On one hand its officials constantly cry out about being cash strapped, bankrupt, and unable to provide the most basic and essential of municipal services to the citizenry of the capital. On the other hand, they just splurge hundreds of millions of dollars a year on themselves, without care or concern, for which the citizenry gets no returns. This is just unhindered venality to its highest.
Around the world, governments, local governments, businesses both small and large, public corporations and other entities have all been downsizing their human resources due to the economic crunch caused by shrinking economies, and as a consequence of increasing the efficiency of their operations through mechanisation, automation, computerisation, etc.
At the Georgetown Municipality, they have been doing the exact opposite. They have been upsizing their human resources in a major way, and not at the lower-level, labour-intensive areas where the sanitation workers, labourers, construction workers, weeders, etc, are placed; but at the top tier, where their pals are earning fat cat salaries, allowances and other perks for hardly doing anything.
It should be noted that, during the last two years, whilst engaged in this obtuse featherbedding, the Council has opted to contract out most of their services and obligations, which should have resulted in the retrenchment of most of their staff, but instead did not. A few examples to which I refer would be the engagement of a private guard service without a tender process and in which a member of the ‘Fantastic Four’ has a special financial interest. This is whilst still having guards on the employ of the Council, and an entire City Police Department costing tens of millions of dollars per month.
They have also hired a contractor to install electrical cabling and fixtures in the City Constabulary Training School whilst deliberately opting not to utilise their own electricians, who remain idle in the meanwhile. Incredibly, they have also hired this same contractor, who seems to be a ‘Jack of all Trades’ to weed parapets, clear the drainage of aquatic overgrowth to the tune of hundreds of millions per month, whilst having their own weeders, tree trimmers, drainage workers, and sanitation workers fiddling. This is all without tender or bidding procedures being adhered to.
Why would the Council be allowed to call a fire sale in which it literally gave away most of its garbage collection trucks received as donations from Government, and other refuse collecting and excavating equipment, when it has a financially starved mechanical workshop with the capacity to refurbish and maintain these pieces of equipment. Before long, the contractors to whom they sold this equipment will have these items fully functional again, and would rent them to the very Council at a rate several times more than they bought it for, laughing all the way to the bank. I do not believe that the decision makers at City Hall are totally senseless, so there must be some other motivating factors.
With thanks,
Riley Matthews
