The City Hall was and is corrupt

Jun 14, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It was just the other day that Mr. Wesley Kirton took objection to some of my criticisms of Guyana during the Golden Jubilee celebrations. Mr. Kirton is not the only one. People voice concern all the time about negative newspaper coverage of Guyana. One of the automatic observations that come from these folks is that – “it happens in other countries.”
Indeed it does. But what they do not go on to tell you is that in other countries they do not sit idly by and let it happen again, and again and again. Go to the letter pages of the newspapers on any day of the week and you see how uncouth and illegal a policeman’s behaviour was after he stopped a driver. Go back to that newspaper one month later and you will see a published lamentation on the identical subject.
If you check on the status of those policemen no paper citation of discipline was placed in their file. What happens after? He will do his illegal thing, again and again and again
Guyana is not the only land where crazy things happen. Guyana may be the only country where crazy things are allowed to continue. Take a hanging GPL pole. Go back five years ago to the letter pages and you will read about the calls made to GPL but the technicians never came. Fast forward the tape to 2016 and you will read a similar report. By the time of the next General Elections in 2020, many reports of hanging GPL poles will go unheeded.
Was anyone in this country surprised that despite police protection provided for vehicles during the recent cricket matches at the Stadium, cars were broken into and valuable documents and other stuff stolen? Some of the expatriate victims in a letter to this newspaper last Sunday vowed never to return. Which world were these people living in? They were surprised at what happened to them?
Surely, they could not have been so out of touch with Guyana when in these days the click of a mouse puts you in contact with all the news in any country in any part of the world.
It is the same story with the City Council. The financial, moral and political depravities of the Georgetown City Council are allowed to continue. The next LGE is 2019 and from here until then, the people of Guyana will pick up the newspapers and will read about financial skullduggery and secret contracts and jobs for family members at City Hall.
Mr. Kirton replied to me and advised that the things I complained occur in other countries. I wonder if in Washington, D.C where he lives, the corruptibility of City Hall would just go on and on and on. But it does go on and on and on at City Hall in Guyana.
The talk of the town is “forensic audit.” Where is the forensic audit of City Hall? Many players in the administration of City Hall the past 20 years are still there. They are not clean. City Hall has been a Herculean stable of financial conspiracies the past 20 years. The forensic audit is overdue. If the APNU-AFC is going to retain its credibility, it cannot be auditing the books of central institutions while the institution that was crooked as any under the PPP regime, the City Hall remains untouched. City Hall’s financial depravity never ceased with the removal of the PPP after May 2015. In fact, it may have worsened. One reason could be that “we are in power now,”
During the recent clean-up, the letter section of this newspaper was filed with exposures of secret cleaning contracts. Readers were told that Le Repentir cemetery cleaning contract was awarded to a very close family member of Patricia Chase-Green. We were told that a drinks vendor suddenly acquired the largest cleaning contract for Georgetown. Is anyone surprised at the controversy over the award of the parking meter contract?
One can say without fear of contradiction that violators of the bylaws of the City Council grease the palms of certain City Hall officials. I know of two areas – encumbrances on the parapets and pavements and containers. Two businessmen with stuff permanently placed on the parapets outside their business places have become untouchables. And there are five more such cases.
Secondly, City officials are not going after containers that are moving around the city in violation of their restricted hours. In another column, I will look at the potential for destruction as the central government continues to tolerate the brutal, authoritarian attitudes of the City Hall, not to mention its pathological incompetence.

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One thought on “The City Hall was and is corrupt”

JuanMcLeland June 14, 2016 at 6:41 am

Crooked it is . Then we may have to come to the realization that blaming the PPP for the cesspool which the city became was a part of a political strategy to keep the citizens angry and feeling victimized . Bring on the audit .

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