Everyone should be ashamed of this ‘cover of crap’

May 13, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
After living here (Guyana) for more than a month I have worked out why the country is below sea level. The huge weight of waste on the streets, the land and the rivers, is sinking the ground.
In a land of abundant natural resources and individual enterprise, the remarkable result of rampant richness is – rubbish.
Is everyone blind to this blight on the growth of Guyana? Is it somehow someone else’s problem? Filth does not fly away unaided. Nor does it appear from nowhere. No efforts are expended to lessen this layer of litter. Every one of us should be ashamed of this ‘cover of crap’.
With an ethos of enterprise, and at least three waste management companies here, is no-one environmentally energised enough to extract the economic and cultural benefits of high-yield waste management and aggressive recycling? Will no one give Guyana a durable ‘dig in the ribs’ and say “Do something about it – now.” Why is there no open outrage over this offensive odor? (There is less waste on the streets of India – even England is clean by comparison. If I had seen the reality perhaps I would have politely declined the proposal to come here.)
Will Guyana sit, surrounded by a psychologically non-existent, mounting detritus dump, wondering why visitors vanish, and inward investment is insignificant, tourism trickles, food exports fade, and the economy expires? Will we only do something when we realise that the world no longer grants Guyana the label of ‘green, glorious Guyana with Garden City Georgetown’, but instead uses the absolutely appropriate appellation of ‘Garbage Guyana’?
P. J. Wain

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