General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party Dr Bharrat Jagdeo today defended his party’s decision to accept former Mayor Patricia Chase-Green as a candidate for the upcoming Local Government Elections (LGE).
Chase-Green was heavily criticised for her role in the parking meter scandal.
“On the parking meter, yes, Chase-Green was a central play…if she’s found culpable in anyway whatsoever, she’ll have to deal with the consequences but we don’t let one issue define how we relate to people” Jagdeo told a press conference.
Chase-Green, on Nominations Day, express confidence in the PPP, saying “we look forward to full progress, unity, peace, and togetherness. Development of the city. When we’ve come out victorious… we’ll deal with that plan. We already have a plan [to improve the city].”
“We just submitted a winning list to Georgetown,” she added.
Back in 2016, the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) of Georgetown, under the then mayorship of Chase-Green and then Town Clerk Royston King, had entered into a contract with Mexican company Smart City Solutions (SCS), under the previous A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) government for the installation of parking meters in the capital city.
However, the roll out of the project had sparked widespread public outcry and massive protest actions in Georgetown, resulting in the project being halted since. As a consequence, SCS is suing the Guyana Government.
A team of lawyers from the United States-based law firm – Foley Hoag and Associates – were recently in Guyana to interview potential witnesses in the US$100M proceedings filed by SCS.
The Guyana Government had announced back in January 2022 that it retained Foley Hoag to defend the country against the case filed by SCS at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) based in Washington DC, US.
The parking meters were active in January 2017, but this was met with strong resistance from the then PPP/C Opposition, private sector bodies, and ordinary citizens, who formed an organisation called Movement Against Parking Meters (MAPM) – which went on to hold some of the largest non-political protests ever seen in the city.
Amid public pressure, the then APNU/AFC Government finally intervened and suspended the bylaws which paved the way for the implementation of metered parking, thus effectively halting the parking meter project. The project has since remained stalled.
Meanwhile, in January 2018, a ‘Parking Meter Renegotiation Committee’ at City Hall proposed a reduction in the parking fee from $500 per hour to $150 per hour.
Three months later, the then City Council approved amendments to the bylaws and had even appeared before the then APNU/AFC coalition Cabinet to discuss the changes to the contract, but the then Government never gave the green light for the project to recommence.
However, a new City Council was elected later that year, and current Mayor Ubraj Narine had told this publication back in April 2019 that he was in no rush to reintroduce the initiative.
Although the contract had already been renegotiated, the Mayor also indicated that he would still need to further renegotiate with the investors before moving to reintroduce the project.
