By Devina Samaroo
The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is accused of deliberately creating emergency situations in order to ignore the tendering process in the award of multi-million dollar contracts, as is the situation with the $150M Le Repentir Cemetery Cleanup.
The contract was given to Chung’s Global for restoration works at the graveyard at Le Repentir.
The award of this contract has raised eyebrows within the Georgetown Mayor and City Council and is one of the reasons why a no-confidence motion was tabled against Town Clerk, Royston King.
Councillor Bisram Kuppen told News Room during an interview today that it seems as though an emergency situation was created so that this particular contractor can benefit.
“If they had done routine maintenance by the council, that is cleaning every week or month like they’re supposed to, then you wouldn’t run into this big problem that you have where you’re calling in contractors with heavy equipment to clean it,” he explained.
According to the Municipal and District Council’s Act, all contracts exceeding the value of $250,000 must be tendered. The only exception is when there is an emergency.
Kuppen noted that there are many instances where contracts were given to preferred companies under the pretext of emergencies.
“As to how that one contractor is selected, that has to be a question the Town Clerk will have to answer, I don’t know how he selected or why he selected, how he is paid. how he determined whether he’s worth his worth and so forth,” the PPP Councillor said.
Regarding the cemetery cleanup, the councillor questioned why the Town Clerk does not ensure there is regular maintenance of the facility.
“It’s reasonable for anyone to look at this and say why aren’t you doing your routine maintenance … why are they waiting all this time, they have over 800 people in the council, the engineer department has many employees, why aren’t they doing routine maintenance?”
City Hall had stated that the restoration works are part of a wider strategy to restore the city. The restoration work includes the removal of overgrown bushes and using an “environmentally-friendly chemical” to help with the overgrowth and hanging trees. The contractor is also clearing and weeding all canals and waterways in the cemetery.
