Complete reform needed at City Council to keep abreast of country’s modernisation

By Tamica Garnett

WITH Local Government Elections (LGE) mere weeks away and Georgetown poised for a new council, Chairman of the 2009 Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Mayor and City Council (MCC), Keith Burrowes, says that the municipality is critically in need of a redesigned assembly and a strong city plan. In an exclusive sit down with the Sunday Chronicle, the former

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest), also supported calls for the upgrading of the legislation governing local government organs.

“Georgetown is being modernised around a City Council that unless it is completely reformed, it cannot respond to the modernisation that is taking place, because there is so much interlink between the two,” Burrowes related.

Burrowes has intricate knowledge into the operations of City Hall, having spent over a year studying the functioning of the municipality, and later, producing a report containing some 45 recommendations.

The recommendations in Burrowes’ CoI final report received bipartisan acceptance and support from the councillors, however, years later, the recommendations remain to be implemented.

Over the years, the councillors have simply continued to shift blame on the lack of movement on the recommendations. In 2018, a subsequent CoI into City Hall ordered by the Local Government Commission (LGC) further validated that the recommendations of Burrowes’ report should have been implemented.

The capital city, Georgetown is currently managed by a 30-seat council that presides over the city’s 15 constituencies, aided by the administrative arm which is headed by the Town Clerk.

From his study, Burrowes recalls that the Council, which was headed by then Mayor Hamilton Greene, made managing the city all the more difficult by inhibiting the work of the administration.

However, Burrowes noted that while he had the full support of the then Mayor, there were several other councillors who were stymying movement and development of the municipality.

“They had some really good people working there [in the administration]; technically capable people, and when I started to look at the system, I started to realise that the culture was so anchored into a particular way that if you come in and you’re a professional, there is no way that you can survive if you don’t fall into line.

“I had endless meeting with the management team and the junior staff from different departments; there were people there who really wanted to see change but the system was not allowing it. The Council was an impediment,” Burrowes noted.

Over the years, the Georgetown Council has been plagued with accountability issues, and mismanagement; issues with garbage collection, lack of cleaning and maintenance of infrastructure including drainage; roadways continue to decline.

On the issue of accountability, Burrowes attested that he unearthed rampant flouting of accounting practices as it pertains to the Council’s finances.

“If there is a new Council, one of the first things that they should do is run a parallel accounting system. When I was operating there, nothing on the balance sheet, nothing on the financial statements were correct. They didn’t have any documents to support receivables, or payables. There is no supporting documentation to validate the info in the financial statements,” he noted.

However, with the country currently on a path of massive development due to the burgeoning oil and gas industry, citizens wait with bated breath to see the capital city aligned with the transformation taking place across the rest of the country.

Burrowes believes that a new, vibrant council may be able to breathe new life into the city.

“With a new council consisting of people who are professionals, we would start to see change almost immediately. There’s still a lot of development in Georgetown, but the fact is, we need to have a properly functioning City Council and I believe once the people are professional, the technical people who have been appointed to do the job will do the job,” Burrowes reasoned.

On that note, Burrowes believes that the future of Georgetown now lays in the hands of its citizens.

“I’m not saying whom anyone should vote for, but I would say citizens should be objective in what they’re doing and they choose. It’s about who can make the difference,” Burrowes noted.