The Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) is this year aiming to take control of the capital city of Georgetown to allow progress to rein and is urging the voting population to make sure they support the party’s candidates at the upcoming Local Government Elections on June 12.
“Please come out and please support the candidates of the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C), especially at the Mayor and City Council, especially the people of Georgetown who have been complaining for decades about the conditions of the city and who want improved services within and around Georgetown, please come out and support our candidates,” Minister within the Ministry of Housing and Water Susan Rodrigues urged on Wednesday.
She pointed out that in a single election, the PPP/C’s representation at the Council increased remarkably and she hopes this trend continues at this year’s polls.
“In one election, we were able to increase our representation at the Mayor and City Council…we had two representatives on the Mayor and City Council pre-2018 and after the elections of 2018, we were able to increase that by five, so we have seven PPP/C Councillors now at the Mayor and City Council.”
But the Minister explained that this “is not enough”.
“The APNU+AFC Councillors have dominated the seating for decades; the PNC has been in charge of the city from its inception and it is time for a change.”
According to Minister Rodrigues, progress can only come under PPP/C governance and she contended that this is evident when one examines all of the major developments taking place in the country.
“Everything in this country is built by the PPP…when you look around, it doesn’t matter where you are, which region you are…every school, every health center, built by the PPP, every community ground. There must come a time when we have to be honest with ourselves and understand that this party, the PPP represents progress,” Rodrigues posited.
Time and again, Central Government has been forced to intervene to ensure the proper functioning of the city owing to failures on the party of the M&CC.
This is particularly evident when it comes to the management of the city’s drainage infrastructure.
“Given our experience with and the history of ineffective management of Georgetown’s drainage system by the M&CC, when we came back into government, a monitoring team with instituted. This team would report daily about the operations of the City’s structures. We’ve seen on numerous occasions, more so during the rainy seasons, the ineffective management of many of these pumps and sluices by the M&CC…Today, I received reports that the sluices at Ruimveldt south, La Penitence south, and Cowan Street in Kingston were not open. Also, the pumps at Cowan Street and Lamaha Street were not on even though the sluice was not open. There were no operators around. The pump at Ruimveldt south had to be turned on since the sluice operator was not there. The Liliendaal pumps were not on. The gate was locked so the engineers couldn’t tell if the operator was present. The people at the City Council like to make excuses about fuel but the person responsible for delivering the fuel was on site and no one was there at the pumps at Cowan Street and Lamaha Street,” Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha had explained in June 2022.
Around this time the year prior, the Minister made similar calls to the M&CC after checks by engineers attached to the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) to several pumps and sluices around Georgetown revealed that several structures including the Ruimveldt sluice were not operating because there was no operator present.
Moreover, the Ministry of Public Works has been executing a number of enhancement works on roads that fall under the purview of the M&CC, with the most recent being the rehabilitation of Sandy Babb Street. It was reported that although that road’s maintenance falls within the purview of the M&CC, the Ministry of Public Works’ Special Projects Unit was instructed to execute the repairs to bring relief to scores of motorists and residents.
