Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 08, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News – Georgetown is a dying city. It is decayed and degraded; and has no future.
The PPP/C realizes the impossibility of renovating Georgetown. This is why it is thinking about a second city, near to Soesdyke.
The decision of PPP/C to move towards a second city rather than secondary town, has nothing to do with the need to respond to new population centers. If this was the case, then the place identified for the new city should have been Diamond or Parfaite Harmonie.
Yesterday, the Mayor and City Council of Georgetown re-elected Mayor Ubraj Narine for another year. The Mayor extended the olive branch saying that he was interested in working with the government for the development of the city. Then almost in the same breadth, he threw some broadsides at the very government which he says he wants to work with.
The government is not interested in local government. It never was.
One of the reasons why Donald Ramotar lost the Presidency was because the movers and shakers within the party were not interested in spending G$4B to hold local government elections. They saw that as a waste of time and resources.
The PPP/C’s refusal to hold local government elections had nothing to do with the fear of losing those elections. The PPP/C did not lose the popular vote in local government elections in 1994, 2018 and 2016. It humiliated the APNU+AFC and the PNC/R and the AFC in local government elections in 2016 and 2018 respectively.
The PPP/C views development strictly in financial terms. It has no reverence for local democracy, seeing local government elections as a financial burden on the Treasury. It probably calculates that the cost of executing local government elections is not worth the while and that the same money can be used to provide another G$25,000 per household.
The PPP/C would have looked at Georgetown and the mountain of problems it faces. It would have recognized that putting money into the City Council is like pouring it down a bottomless pit. No amount of money can rescue what is essentially a leadership problem in the city.
The Mayor and City Council of Georgetown does not need the help of Central Government. It has the tax base to be able to operate at a surplus. It, however, faces two sets of problems. First, its tax policies are imbalanced and heavily against businesses which are unfairly and harshly taxed. The bulk of the G$6B which is said to be owed to City Hall are owed by businesses who are being sabotaged by the inability of the Council to remove unfair competition from vendors.
The vendors are not paying any taxes. Even the cleaning fee, which they are charged is less than the cleaning fee paid by businesses. City Council can never collect that G$6B since much of it are penalties owed by businesses. The taxes and penalties are so severe that if you own a business and you miss a year’s payment of rates of taxes, this then becomes compounded by the heavy penalty, which makes it even more difficult to pay the next year. The penalties rather than encouraging people to pay their arrears end up encouraging not to pay since they simply cannot afford the compounded arrears and prefer to await an amnesty which in recent times is lacking in transparency and has to be negotiated.
In the meantime, residential places in the city are undervalued for rates and taxes and purposes. The taxes, which most residential properties pay barely cover the cost of garbage collection. They certainly cannot pay for the other services such as roads, streetlights, drainage and weeding.
City Council does not need the Government to help it to develop Georgetown. All it has to do is to get its act together and be realistic and fair in setting taxes. The markets should have been a money-spinner for the Council but more business is now done outside the perimeters of the markets than inside and so Council cannot even begin to contemplate charging market rentals.
Instead of taking the vendors off the pavements and into the markets, City Hall is burdening the business sector by taxing containers. This tax is not borne, however, by the businesses. It is borne by the consumers who have to pay it.
The government realises that it a waste of time to try to redeem the city. Things have gone too far down the drain. Georgetown is going to die a slow death. It will still be the capital of Guyana; its sunken investments will mean that business will continue.
Twenty years from now, there is going to be a second city, which is going to surpass Georgetown.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Jagdeo giving Exxon 102 cent to collect 2 cent.
Apr 25, 2024
By Rawle Toney Kaieteur Sports – The French Diplomatic Office in Guyana, in collaboration with the Guyana Olympic Association and UNICEF, hosted an exhibition on Tuesday evening at the...Kaieteur News – Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, the General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, persists in offering... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders Waterfalls Magazine – On April 10, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States... more
Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.
Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]