-The City Stinks of Garbage!
City Hall was yesterday able to pay contractors $5M of the amount owed to them for garbage disposal works. However the payment, which represents a fraction of the actual amount, owed will not be sufficient enough to see the contractors resuming their operation.
According to the municipality’s Public Relations Officer, Royston King, each of the contractors, Cevon’s Waste Management and Puran Brothers Disposal Service, were each paid $2.5M.
King acknowledged that the amount paid has allowed for a resolution of the situation, which has seen a halt to the garbage collection process in several sections of the city.
The contractors, King admitted, are owed in excess of $60M but that the municipality is doing everything in its power to bring an end to the unfortunate situation.
“We regret this. But this is the reality and of course our Treasury Department as well as other officials including the Director of Solid Waste Management are continuing to work assiduously to see how much we can generate the rest of the money to pay the contractors.”
However, Deputy Mayor, Robert Williams, is optimistic that the municipality will be able to unearth enough funds to pay off the contractors by Friday.
Williams related the municipal Finance Committee met on Tuesday and had discussions with the administration during which emphasis was placed on mobilising monies for payment for service that will be provided throughout this month. At the meeting it was highlighted too, that the municipality is in arrears with payments for three months with the garbage contractors thus prior must be given towards them.
As part of the mobilising efforts, Williams said that a request has been made to Central Government for the payment of the first half of its 2009 property taxes.
No comments:
Post a Comment