GEORGETOWN HAS A LOT OF SEWAGE

May 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

You know things are getting serious in Guyana when the government responds to the substance of an article written by Uncle Freddie. Usually the government would ignore the ravings of the Kaieteur News daily columnist but when he touched on matters of sh… sorry I mean sewage, there was an immediate response from the government indicating that some 300 million dollars is to be spent on rehabilitating the system.
There was one unfortunate aspect to this whole episode and it concerns Kaieteur News.

This newspaper ran Uncle Freddie’s column, which was well researched, for he was able to point out just how many of the sewage pumps were non-functional in the city. Here was a columnist providing fodder for a new feature and even though the Kaieteur News did pick up on the situation as regards the sewage system in the city, what it published seemed as if it had come straight out of a GINA bulletin.
The publisher of this newspaper has always encouraged criticism of his newspaper. In fact he sees such criticism as helping the newspaper do better. This is why I am free to express my disappointment in the follow-up this newspaper did on the piece penned by Uncle Freddie.

I felt that if the Kaieteur News was going to follow up on Uncle Freddie’s article they should have done a better job. Instead of simply baring the excuses and promises made by the government in relation to the sewage system, they could have done a far more detailed investigative piece so as to confirm what Uncle Freddie was saying, and that is, that most of the sewage pumps in the city are down.
If this is indeed the case then we have a really messy situation on our hands. A back up of any sewage system can have terrible implications for public health and can lead to an epidemic. This is not something that any one wishes to see happen in a small city like Georgetown, because a major epidemic such as cholera can overnight wipe out the entire population of Georgetown or force the quarantining of the capital. This too is something that we do not want.

It is time therefore that the government stop making excuses and instead put local resources into fixing the non-functional sewage pumps. It is simply unthinkable that one, much less more than one sewage pump should be out of commission within a back up in place.
We have also got to get rid of the mentality that major works in Guyana require funding from international lending agencies. The government reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars a few years ago to dig up a street and relay sewage lines. This was done to facilitate the construction of an international hotel. Hundreds of millions have been spent on sewage lines and the sod had not yet been turned for the construction of the hotel.

So why then can the government not, after all these years, spend a few hundred million dollars, in fact three hundred million dollars out of the windfall from the Value Added Tax to ensure that our sewage pumps are functional. We do not require international assistance for this. What we require is a willingness of the government to understand how a serious situation can develop if all sewage pumps are not working. For one, very few tourists will want to come to a country where such a state of affairs exists.
I therefore do not wish to hear excuses about how old the sewage system is.

This is no excuse for not having functional pumps. And it is no excuse at all, because not all of the system is old, since new pipes were laid in certain areas. In any event, this government should not be making excuses about the old system. This government has been in power for sixteen years and has had no shortage of resources with which to change the entire system. It must therefore accept responsibility and stop making excuses.
Excuses will not change anything. What is needed is an operational plan that would allow for dysfunctional pumps to be replaced and for existing pumps to be maintained.
This was one of the aspects, which the Kaieteur News feature missed, and it was highly unfortunate.