No more parking meters outside schools

Industrial unrest by teachers in Georgetown was Friday averted after Smart City Solutions (SCS) and the Mayor and City Council decided to discontinue paid parking outside schools.

“Vehicle parking spaces immediately in front of the public schools will not be regulated for the purpose of metered parking by Smart City Solutions,” according to a joint statement by SCS, City Hall and the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU).

According to the statement, the decision was taken “after giving due and special consideration to the critical and fundamental role that our teachers play in the education and development of the nation’s children.”

GTU President, Mark Lyte told Demerara Waves Online News that SCS representatives turned up at the union’s headquarters demanding that teachers pay at least half of the fee. “We insisted that we shouldn’t pay and they finally decided that teachers will not be paying to park, they are not going to put parking meters in front of the schools that are still earmarked and the ones that do have they will remove them,” he said.

The GTU President said teachers were now relieved that they would no longer be required to pay to park outside their schools.

If SCS and City Hall had gotten their way, each teacher would have had to pay GYD$1,200 per day to park, a situation that Lyte said would have triggered industrial unrest.

There are 50 schools across the city but so far meters have been erected outside Bishop’s High School and the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre, both located on Carmichael Street, Georgetown.