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Sewage madness and the hopelessness of a government

May 20, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Do you know that Georgetown has 24 sewage stations (pumping stations) and at the moment only three are working? There are two in Charlestown and one at the junction of Camp and Regent Streets. Of those 22 non-functioning units, the one at High and Princes Streets has been out for 12 years.
The station at Sussex and Saffon Streets has been down for a decade. At Quamina and Main Streets, the operation has ceased to exist for eight years now. Three stations in Queenstown – in Luluni, Forshaw and New Garden Streets respectively – have not been functioning for five years now.
Of those 24 stations, the neglect has gone on for so long that seven stations will have to be replaced. Most people who grew up in Georgetown would know about the blue and black rods that the sewage cleaners would use to remove the debris from clogged chambers. The sewage department of GWI needs about 200 rods for standard work. At the moment, there are only 35 rods.
GWI no longer has the use of its suction vehicle. This was donated by OMAI before GWI was created. GWI was preceded by GS&WC – Georgetown Sewerage and Water Commissioners. This suction vehicle was used to pull out the really bad chambers that were inundated with accumulated fat and debris. It has been out order for five years and has been left in disuse. It is no longer functional. Its parts have been sold.
GWI now contracts suction facilities to Puran Brothers. At the present time, there is only one pick-up truck to serve Georgetown.
This is the state of affairs in Guyana. One can understand why the slaves and sycophants do propaganda work for the Government that has failed this nation. They are employees of the state that have to earn a living.
What is irritating is when you hear the President, his Ministers and his party criticising the private media for ignoring the good things that the Government is doing. Which good things? Isn’t the obsolete Georgetown sewage system vivid testimony that this Government is hopelessly incompetent?
One day, early this year, Rustom Seegopaul and Dale Andrews of the Kaieteur News and I heard that an electricity pole at the corner of Sussex and Charles Streets was on fire. We went. We saw the fire engine and the fire men hanging around. We asked why no action as yet.
They said GPL crew has to come to turn off the electricity flow. They told us they had been waiting for 15 minutes for the GPL people.
We stayed around for another ten minutes and GPL was yet to show. This pole was outside a school and it served a large neighbourhood in the Charlestown/Albouystown area. I don’t know if GPL ever came or if the fire burned itself out. But this I know – such an occurrence should never happen in a country in 2009.
If that fire had spread it would have devastated dozens of homes and that school. The President of this country calls the private media the new opposition. We are the new opposition because we write about the hopelessness and pathological incompetence of the Jagdeo/PPP administration. Rustom Seegopaul is in his twenties. I told him that he is too young to understand what life was like under President Forbes Burnham.
While waiting for the GPL personnel to come, I described for Rustom what is was like in those days.
The electricity crew would have taken just as long as they did in 2009. But I told Rustom that it was at a time when Guyana was totally broke. I explained to Rustom that under President Burnham, the Treasury was empty but yet you saw the sewage cleaners and the electricity guys hustling to get to places where the problems were located.
It took a long time for them to come. They hadn’t sufficient tools to do the job but they came. Here in 2009, Mr. Jagdeo, his Ministers and his party boast about debt reduction and all that jazz. But in an eerie way, life is harder than in 1984 when Guyana was broke.
Something is morbidly wrong with the Government of Guyana. It has received billions of American dollars in aid. The citizens now have to pay for water. The electricity bill is higher than in the eighties.
Education was free under Burnham, now you pay for it at UG. Yet why is this country so run down? UG has collapsed. The GPL has collapsed.
The sewage system has collapsed. And what little dollars we have, the Government spends it on circus. Did I tell you that there is an international competition in Chinese checkers and the Guyana Government will be hosting it?

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