HGP Nightly News – The Government of Guyana has quietly and without warning stripped the Georgetown City Council of control over 22 of the capital’s streets and the Mayor is furious. In a move that has “blindsided’ city authorities, the Ministry of Public Works gazetted a series of Ministerial Orders on March 20th under the Roads Act, reclassifying a sweeping list of well-known Georgetown streets as Public Roads and bringing them directly under the ministry’s control. Mayor Alfred Mentore, speaking to Nightly News in an invited comment, explained that he learned of the transition not through any official channel, but through members of the public reaching out to him.
The streets now wrested from the City Council’s portfolio read like a who’s who of Georgetown’s most prominent thoroughfares; Camp Street, Regent Street, Robb Street, Lamaha Street, Vlissengen Road, Middle Street, Cummings Street and Charlotte Street among them, a total of 22 roads that have long formed part of the council’s assets. So entrenched were these streets within the council’s portfolio that the Auditor General’s office has for years listed them as part of the municipality’s assets in official audits. The implications of their sudden reclassification, Mayor Mentore warned, stretch far beyond a simple administrative reshuffling.
“I was not told. This was never run by us,” Mentore said bluntly, making clear that neither he nor, to his knowledge, the Town Clerk had been consulted before the gazette orders were published. The mayor confirmed he only became aware of the takeover when concerned members of the public contacted him directly; a revelation that speaks volumes about the manner in which the transfer was handled. “I obviously blindsided by it,” he said, adding that even if the Town Clerk had been approached, there was a clear responsibility to bring such a significant matter before the full council.
Beyond the question of process, the practical consequences for the council are considerable. Billboards and advertisement structures operated under council permits line many of these streets, and their sudden transfer to a different authority throws the management of those commercial arrangements into serious doubt. The council’s audited books, its revenue streams and its ability to manage its own infrastructure are all now thrown into uncertainty by a decision it had no hand in making and no warning of receiving.
Mentore was careful to draw a distinction between roads that have always been classified as public roads, such as Vlissengen Road and those that he believes were clearly city streets and have now been effectively seized. Streets like Da Silva Street and Danraj Street, he noted, fall squarely into the latter category and should never have been transferred without meaningful consultation. He confirmed he will be writing to the minister, issuing a formal press release and raising the matter urgently at the council’s finance meeting and he did not rule out a legal challenge.
But it was his personal remarks that revealed the depth of his frustration and the broader tension simmering between the Government and local authorities. “Government has been very obnoxious recently,” he said with unmistakable directness. “They think that this is some one-party state, operating in a fashion where they don’t respect the local authority. They believe that everything must happen from the center.” For Mentore, this is not an isolated incident but part of a troubling pattern, a push to centralise power and sideline the very institutions of local governance that exist to represent communities on the ground. His message to the Government, and to fellow politicians and MPs, was equally direct: stand up, push back, and demand that the rule of consultation and collaboration be restored before more is lost.
