Déjà Vu? City’s $150M debt could see withdrawal of garbage disposal services
The capital’s two biggest waste disposal companies, Cevons Waste Management and Puran Brothers appear poised to take steps to press City Hall into making good on payments due to the two companies for services provided earlier this year, the debt now having reached a figure well in excess of $150 million dollars since government’s intervention last year to liquidate the more than $300 million owing to the two companies up to that time.
On Monday, during a media tour to the Haag Bosch Landfill Site on the East Bank Demerara which is being managed jointly by the two companies, Cevons Waste Management Chief Executive Officer, Morse Archer demonstrated clear signs of frustration as he related what he says is City Hall’s “unchanging attitude” to doing business with its contractors. “I really don’t see how we can go on like this. There is a huge cost to running this service including equipment and workers’ salaries,” Archer told Stabroek Business.
Puran Brothers General Manager, Kaleshwar Pooran assumed a similar posture and though he makes the point about the inability of the company to transfer its inventory to serving another client, pointing out that its trucks cannot simply be modified “to fetch sand,” he too understands that the situation has become untenable.
The ritual round of letters to the various ‘connected’ public officials has already begun with communication to Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan though on Monday neither of the two companies was prepared to say whether they thought that this time around government would show up to rescue the situation. However, the point made at the media briefing by another Cevon’s senior official, Morris Archer, that the threatened