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Is this too much to ask?

Dec 13, 2008 Editorial

Rains are the norm at this time of the year. Heavy downpours are also nothing usual, except these days it invariably leads to immediate flooding of sections of the city.

The problems of drainage within the capital are common knowledge. And while the City Council is often quick to blame citizens for the totally inexcusable and indiscriminate dumping of garbage in drains, alleyways and canals, causing these to be clogged up, the Council cannot exculpate itself from its three-decade-old failure to maintain the city’s drainage system.

The problems that the city faces with drainage are not overnight phenomena. And they did not emerge with the increased use of plastic and Styrofoam. These merely aggravated the problem, which was caused by over three decades of neglect of the city’s drains and canals.

Some of the major canals which are supposed to be dredged at least once every ten years have not been properly desilted for over thirty years.

In addition to this, the gang of municipal workers, which used to go through the wards of the city cleaning gutters, cropping the sides of the drains, weeding parapets and ensuring that alleyways were litter-free, has long been downsized as a result of the crisis of the seventies.

The special trailers that once moved through the city every week, picking up garden waste, are no longer provided.

This lack of maintenance has continued to this day, and results in the wanton wastage of resources.
Each year, the City Council hires private contractors to desilt alleyways, spending millions of dollars each year. Yet, within months of cleaning, these alleyways are clogged up again, and the main reason is because there is no maintenance.

A tremendous downpour on Wednesday, followed by one late Thursday night, resulted in flooding in many sections of the city. The City Council, apart from blaming the litterbugs, also complained about a lack of financing.

However, it needs to also accept its own poor planning, especially after spending millions of dollars for de-clogging drains, then failing to continue weekly routine maintenance.

The Government is no doubt frustrated by the record of the City Council, but it refuses, no doubt out of fear of the political ramifications, to dissolve the City Council and to appoint an Interim Management Committee to take over the affairs of the city.

We call on the opposition to seriously consider the inconvenience and distress that is being foisted on citizens because of an ineffective municipality in the city; and as it has done in other areas, to support the removal of the existing Council.

If this is too much to ask, we feel that the Government should intervene directly in rescuing the city, by working out an arrangement with the Council in which Government would undertake to totally manage the drainage system.

A few years ago, after the 2005 floods, the Government launched an Enhancement Programme in which it employed persons to keep the drains and canals of communities clean.

The Government should resuscitate this programme, involve the business community in its management, and work out a protocol with City Hall that would allow the Government to take over completely the maintenance programme that has been absent for so long.

Whether we like it or not, Georgetown is the capital city, and a poor image of our capital reflects badly on our country. It will turn tourists off if, when they come to Georgetown, they experience a garbage-infested city which floods at the slightest sprinkle.

We urge both sides — the Government and the Council — in this, the season of goodwill, to set aside their differences and sit down and work out a protocol that would allow some sanity to be restored to the one-time Garden City. Is this too much to ask?

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