Guyana already spends US$2 million on parking meter arbitration case

Last Updated on Tuesday, 9 January 2024, 10:09 by Denis Chabrol

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green inspecting a parking meter in Mexico recently. (file picture)

The Guyana government has so far spent more than US$2 million on fighting an international arbitration case concerning the previous administration’s decision to halt the implementation of a parking meter system in the capital city, Georgetown, Attorney General  Anil Nandlall said Monday.

The then A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC)-led coalition administration had suspended the parking meter system, after a wide cross-section of the city’s business community, other groups and individuals had held days of protests outside City Hall.

Mr Nandlall said the Guyana government was now assembling its evidence, local and foreign witnesses to fight the US$100 million case that has been filed by the Mexican firm, Smart City Solutions (SCS) in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington DC, United States.

He said “hundreds of thousands of United States dollars” would have to be spent on airfares and accommodation for local witnesses to travel to the US as well as local and foreign experts. “I say that to you so that you and the public can understand he humongous expenditure of public funds that continue to be made for blunders which we inherited from the previous administration,” saying that the funds could have been spent on pensions, wages and social sectors that ‘require huge financial injections.”

Among the proponents of the parking meter system had been then Mayor Patricia Chase-Green who has since switched political allegiance from the People’s National Congress Reform/ APNU to Mr Nandlall’s People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) for which is now a City Councillor.