Invasion of the bucket people

Nov 07, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Last Saturday morning the music of Nana Mouskori woke me up earlier than I would have liked to. I had left my discman on with the speakers plugged in. I got up and gazed through my window and saw an amazing sight that brought back memories of an incident on Vlissengen Road many, many years ago.
My bedroom window overlooks both the Caricom Secretariat which is on the southern side of the Railway Embankment and the Caricom Secretariat Annex, on the northern half. There were a few dozen persons – children, women, men – with buckets in their hands descending on the Caricom Secretariat Annex.
I knew from looking at them that water supply for Turkeyen residents which disappeared early the day before was still not forthcoming. It couldn’t have been GPL. When GPL makes our life miserable at Turkeyen the water flow stops for obvious reason. We got blackout early Friday morning but power returned an hour later. So the cessation of water supply could not have been because of electricity disruption.
For the whole of October 31, Turkeyen had no water flow. The problem persisted into the next day. This meant that the staff at the Secretariat had to rely on their tank reserve. I don’t know how many black tanks the Secretariat got but when you think of the numbers that work at Caricom, they must have run out of water last Friday.
Secretariat staff was spared the agony on Saturday because it wasn’t a working day but something happened at the Annex that morning. It appears that water came for the Secretariat and the working class folks of Turkeyen invaded the place and took it for themselves. The Caricom employees weren’t there and the security guards did not stop them. So no water for the Secretariat on Friday, October 31, then no electricity supply for Monday, November 3 until 15.00 hours.
What next for the Caricom Secretariat? Could this misery lead to the possible consideration of moving the headquarters of Caricom from Guyana?
When you criticise this government, you are given all types of derogatory labels by the leaders in Government but are we facing collapse of the utility services? In Mahaica last week, people took to the streets and broke GWI mains. It wasn’t GWI’s fault. The CEO of GWI told the media that GPL disruptions were to be blamed.
Why did the water “recede” for two days in Turkeyen, thus affecting the Caricom Secretariat? In Wortmanville, outside of the NIS, there is an important pumping station that serves the sewage system of south Georgetown. It has been down for two weeks now, creating havoc for thousands of residents.
GWI officials told me that it will take about two weeks to get it up and running and that is not a guarantee. What happens is that when the dwellers upstairs flush the toilet, there is a back up in the downstairs washroom. Imagine what those people are going through.
At the beginning of this essay, I hinted at the memories that flashed through my mind when I looked out my window last Saturday and saw the invasion of the bucket people. I saw that scene on Vlissengen Road one Sunday evening during the reign of President Desmond Hoyte. This was about twenty years ago when international donors were not lending money to Guyana. These international donors are pouring money into Guyana, have been doing that since free and fair elections returned to the landscape, yet Guyana today looks like a country on the verge of collapse.
Yet commentators are greeted with contempt by the political governors and insulting adjectives are assigned to them when they write about this gradual disintegration.
The leaders in Government point to hotels going up, new shopping centres opening up, the construction business having a good time but what has this got to do with the performance of the PPP Government that has been in power for sixteen years? I do not want to belabour the point about GPL; I wrote about that on Wednesday. But GPL is the largest testimony to date that this Government has failed. It has failed because it embraces the politics of the old.
I am typing this column in the early hours of Wednesday morning while watching with my wife the celebrations of the Obama victory. All over America, the talk about Obama is that he broke the back of old politics and his victory was a cry for change. One hope is that the PPP will use the extraordinary story of Barack Obama and what he stands for to change course in Guyana.
One desperately hopes that the Obama phenomenon will mean something to the PPP leaders in terms of civilizing the use of power.

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