Businesses shut doors in protest of parking meters

GUYANA - A number of businesses in Georgetown protested against the parking meters yesterday by closing their doors for one hour – between noon and 13:00hrs. The Movement against Parking Meters (MAPM) had encouraged companies to show support in this manner through their social media outreach.

Among the businesses closed were included Coffee Bean, Graphic Master, Universal Travel, Clairans and Outdoor Store on Church Street; Beepats and M. Phagoo and Sons on Regent Street along with Muneshwers Limited on Water Street, Narine’s Liquor Store and Digicom on Robb Street and Kojac Marketing on Quamina Street. The closure was a last-minute move according to Dr. Rahaman. He said that the MAPM had wanted to have the businesses closed for next week’s demonstration: “Next week is when we plan to do that fully, because we’re just working on social media, so we’re not reaching a whole lot of people as much as we want to, but we’re planning to actually get on the ground a bit more and do more interaction.”

Yesterday marked the fourth silent protest organized by the apolitical group, which was attended by a growing number of supporters from a wide cross-section of businesses, their employees and civil society members. Present at the protest was People’s Progressive Party member of parliament, Dr. Vindhya Persaud who said that the parking meter project completely disregarded the consultation process and highlighted that another worrying fact is that much of the Guyanese dollar would be taken out of the country.

(kaieteurnews.com)