A hobbled City Hall administration

If one is even remotely aware of the sheer scale of the crisis that has been afflicting the administration of the capital for many years, then it becomes the easiest thing in the world to be persuaded that City Hall is incurably afflicted with a condition of sheer idiocy.

True, the administration there is currently the subject of a Commission of Inquiry but then we must remember that on the whole and up until now the returns from these pursuits have been considerably disproportionate to their costs. In the extant City Hall instance we can only hope that the outcome is different though, truth be told, it is arguably more a matter of hope than of expectation.

Amidst the unfolding efforts of the COI the idiocy persists. What, in the circumstances, would have prompted the City’s Solid Waste Director Mr. Walter Narine to even contemplate far less articulate the notion of what he appears to envisage as the imminent introduction of a 24-hour garbage disposal service in the capital is a mystery. Truth be told there may well be a considerable case for checking with the gentleman to ascertain whether he might not be seized of the notion that All Fools’ Day is now observed in the month of October.

It is not that the garbage situation in commercial Georgetown is not deserving of a more generous measure of studied attention by City Hall given the disconnect between the trading arrangements in the city and the current garbage disposal regime. Rather, it is a matter of Mr. Narine, seemingly, being mind-bogglingly disconnected from the tenuous nature of the present service given the current imminent collapse in the relationship between City Hall and its two principal garbage disposal contractors, Cevons Waste Management and Puran Brothers.

It is of course unnecessary to recap the 2017 brouhaha between the City and its garbage disposal contractors over the tens of millions in unmet payments for services rendered and the eleventh-hour intervention by central government to prevent what had threatened to be a Christmas-time garbage pileup.

Less than a year later City Hall is saddled with a new garbage disposal bill of around $150 million incurred since the start of this year and we are, as the Stabroek News reported last week, probably on the edge of a withdrawal of services by the two companies, this time, with no central government bailout on the horizon.

That City Hall possesses no reliable revenue stream from which to foot its urban waste disposal costs is no longer a matter for debate except, it seems, in the minds of Mr. Narine and the now on-leave Town Clerk Mr. Royston King.

As we saw last year, the Town Clerk opted to propose various quixotic ‘solutions’ to the garbage disposal debt including the idea of recruiting increasing additional contractors to fill the gap created by the withdrawal of service by the two main contractors. That option, it will be recalled did little more than provide us with a demonstration of how not to provide a garbage disposal service, a circumstance that resulted from the temporary contractors’ lack of the requisite skills and tools.

But it is not just the altogether unacceptable circumstance of the major debt to the two mainstream garbage disposal services that has created what is now clearly a protracted crisis. To that must be added what appears to be a ‘policy’ of an absence of mindfulness for the condition in which the out-ofpocket contractors find themselves as manifested in the summoning of many meetings ostensibly to discuss payments to the contractors which meetings are either called off at the last minute or else end up having nothing whatsoever to do with payments. There can be little doubt – based on what we have been told by the service providers – that over time and on the issue of payments the relationship between City Hall and the contractors had descended into the realm of disregard even contempt for the latter by the former as manifested in instances of frustrating run-around and apparent deceit on City Hall’s part with regard to the issuance of payments to Cevons and Puran.

City Hall, in its condition of manifest inability to effectively execute its responsibilities in the matter of urban garbage disposal, including meeting the cost of the service, has, over time, been afforded far too much latitude to persist in its incompetence without the drawing of a line by central government. Are we to assume that the Council’s legitimate authority in the matter of administering aspects of the welfare of the capital must persist even in circumstances where it is attended by imminent threats to public health and other critical public welfare considerations?

Based on what was said to the media by the CEOs of both garbage disposal companies last week and in circumstances where the likelihood of City Hall settling their outstanding debts to those companies any time soon appearing decidedly unlikely, yet another ugly round of withdrawal of services threatens. That, if it materializes, will be attended by the customary unwholesome consequences…except, of course, central government intervenes to settle with the contractors.

The reality here is that the ‘sacred’ autonomy

which City Hall enjoys has been directly responsible for us having to live with a hobbled municipal administration that continues to expose its seemingly incurable deficiencies on a daily basis. What is completely overlooked (or at least so it seems) are the implications of this defect for the quality of service delivered to the country’s capital and the impact of this as much on the comfort and convenience of the citizenry as on the external image of our country. In other words the extent of the autonomy afforded City Hall in the administration of the capital far exceeds its capacity to deliver effectively in the various areas of its substantive responsibilities.

The pattern of what one might call power without commensurate responsibility enjoyed by City administrators has provided fertile ground for the assumption to office at the highest levels of the municipality of functionaries who lack either the skills or the vision to manage the affairs of the capital efficiently and where incompetence, indifference, indulgence and corruption thrives.

Nothing symbolizes this scandalous state of affairs more poignantly than the occupancy by the City’s ‘Board of Directors’ of the falling apart – literally before our eyes – of a historically significant national edifice by occupants who appear altogether indifferent to the national embarrassment that this represents.

While the pursuits of the ongoing City Hall Commission of Inquiry are confined by specific paradigms the Commissioners must be mindful of the fact that if the outcomes of their exertions are not to be as meaningless as previous probes there is need for them to paint with a broader brush, to try as best they can, to proffer ideas and recommendations that go beyond correcting wrongs and responding to indiscretions, where these may be found to exist. They must make a pointed effort to lay down some sort of road map for making practical adjustments to the existing governance structure at City Hall with a view to placing far greater emphasis on efficiency and accountability and establishing legitimate mechanisms to ensure that autonomy does not trump the time-worn virtue of checks and balances.