City Hall spending lavishly on selected councillors yet claims to be bankrupt

Dear Editor. The contempt, mockery and duplicity of the Mayor, Town Clerk and the favoured cabal at the Georgetown City Council has become just unbearable to many citizens.

Almost every day one can hear cries coming from the Council of bankruptcy, of revenue shortfalls, of the need for a wider revenue base, of being unable to provide the quality of services that they ought to undertake due to a lack of adequate funding, of being cash strapped whilst at the same time officials of the Council are frequently proceeding on wasteful overseas luxury junkets, of paying themselves extra for carrying out duties that they were elected to carry out, of maintaining large retinues of staff, including bodyguards, chauffeurs, personal assistants, immense secretarial and administrative staff, etc.

Someone needs to explain to the citizenry why the members of the renegotiating committee for the scandalous Parking Meter contracts had to be paid large sums extra, to sit on the committee. Someone needs to explain why the Mayor and selected Councillors and staff who were involved in Mashramani activities had to be paid large sums for doing nothing. Someone needs to advise the citizenry what were the tangible benefits derived for the City for all the countless expensive jaunts overseas.

It is simply mind blowing that a supposedly ‘broke municipality’ would even contemplate hosting a ‘City Week’ celebration. How could they allocate a whopping 20 million dollars to fetes and merriment when the claim that they have had to close day care centres due to lack of funding, when they have stopped stray catching in the city due to a lack of funds, when the municipal abattoir and all of their buildings are in the most ruinous state?

Hope they don’t intend to harass the already fragile business community to contribute financially to their fete.

How could the Council not be maintaining our city roads, not replacing defective street lights, not repairing bridges, not cleaning choked drains, not fogging for mosquitoes, but instead putting up expensive and fancy billboards about a green city, whilst maintaining a mammoth staff strength of nearly 1,000 persons, whilst spending hundreds of millions on contractors that have not tendered for jobs they were given, etc.

There is no area of service that the Council is responsible for providing, not a single municipal department, that is free of the most brutal sort of corruption. The Georgetown Municipality has bred a world-class mafia, and it has all begun with their duplicitous Human Resource Department that is well known for putting square pegs in round holes. Yours faithfully, Jermain Johnson