City Council “scampering” to pay over $300M debt to garbage collectors

Garbage collection might soon be a problem for City Hall as two private companies are threatening to withdraw their services if they are not paid significant sums of monies owed to them within the next ten days.

During an interview on Friday, City Hall’s Town Clerk, Royston King disclosed that the Council has “received letters from (its) two contractors” saying that they will be pulling their services from the M&CC. He said “we are very grateful to them for their understanding over the years they’ve been working with us. They’ve been working with us and supporting us without money” King said.

Puran Brothers Disposal Service and Cevon’s Waste Management have given the Council November 14 as the deadline to pay up over $300M or at least begin payment.

King said “the City is not in a position to manage the garbage collection or disposal at the same level the garbage collectors are doing it”, therefore, the Georgetown Municipality will have to try to meet their obligation.

According to King defaulting tax payers and government assistance might be the only way of getting City Hall out of its current situation.

“Well the matter is being discussed by the finance committee right now, so I would be unable to say what percentage of that they’ll be able to pay right now but what I can say is that I know they’re planning strategically to reach out to  people who owe us large sums of money and also to reach out to government to know if we can get assistance” he said.

However, inability to make the payments mean the Solid Waste Department at the council will have to ‘take up the slack’.

This is not the first time that the companies threatened to withdraw their services from City Hall for failing to meet their end of the bargain.