Has a main Georgetown Street been privatised?

May 09, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My April 15 article was titled, “Sex in the middle of the night on top a water tank.” It was motivated by my rejection of the explanation of a murder accused in Berbice who pleaded guilty to killing his heterosexual lover and was sentenced to eight years.
He told the court that he awoke at midnight, looked for his partner, she wasn’t there, went outside, saw her making love with another man on top a water tank.

He went on to state that he picked up a piece of wood, lashed out at the other man, but his lover jumped into the path and got struck in her head. He left her there where she died. He was captured four years later.
Shockingly, the court accepted that mumbo jumbo and gave him a jokingly low sentence. I wasn’t accepting that horse dung of an explanation. I eventually found out what happened.
They had an argument in the house where he began to beat her up. She ran outside, he chased after her and murdered her in cold blood.

He will only serve five years because a year of imprisonment is counted as eight months in Guyana.
To think that the police accepted that comical description from a violent killer is indicative of the failed state that Guyana has become. It is as if this country is just drifting aimlessly.
Take traffic lights confusion. Does this country have competent people to administer the affairs of state? I have to thread carefully with a certain Minister.
I am not afraid of libel but I could use other sentence constructions that would clearly state my motives in what I write.

My reason is to make fair comments on matters of national importance not to scandalize anyone. I have never used personalised and personal pointers in my long years as a columnist.
The traffic lights confusion makes this country look idiotic in the eyes of foreign visitors. No word is too strong to use. Terms like ‘asinine,’ ‘imbecilic,’ ‘stupid,’ are in order when you describe the logistical (for want of a better word) functions of the traffic lights. The quotidian madness the traffic lights cause can be rectified in minutes by simple re-calibration. But sadly, our country has become a failed state.

Let us start with commonsense. If a road is very narrow, then one has to follow international guidelines when demarcating lanes on streets. A lane would have a defined boundary based on the size of vehicles. That to my mind is common sense. Go into any parking lot anywhere in the world, even in the private business places in Guyana, and you will see the slots are of a standard size. They have to be because cars come in standard sizes.

Take Cummings Street between Robb and Regent Streets. You are going south on Cummings Street waiting for the green light. Cars on Cummings Street going north will pass you. But while you are south on Cummings Street waiting, there is a green turning signal.

So the people at the back are abusing you to get out of the way so they can turn. But there is no way to move. You can only go unto the path of the cars that have the green light to travel north.
The exact, very identical situation exists at the UG Access Road and the Railway Embankment. So what is the solution? Commonsense! Recalibrate the signals so the turning light comes on when the straight signal is on. In that way when you are turning and when you are going straight, you have the same light.

Finally, a company may have purchased a street in downtown Georgetown. Quamina Street becomes Holmes Street when it enters Tiger Bay. At Main and Holmes Streets but in Holmes Street proper, a seafood company has parked three large refrigerated containers for years now blocking free flow.
This has been going on for years and it cannot stop because this is where the company keeps its merchandize – in the containers on Holmes Street. In other words, this company is doing business on a public street preventing taxpayers from driving on it. The chaos is exasperating.

Vehicles going east and west on Holmes Street are immobilized when they reach the refrigerated containers. This is nonsensical and absurd. How can a business for years stop the flow of traffic on a main road in downtown Georgetown?
I am thinking of opening a private school outside the Bank of Guyana by the Cenotaph. If they prevent me, I will ask the courts to intervene and stop that seafood company too. Or maybe the company has purchased the street.

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Has a main Georgetown Street been privatised?

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