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Rough country at Christmas

Dec 24, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This writer comes in for libelous commentary quite often in the Chronicle, frequently in the Guyana Times and occasionally in the Mirror, the PPP’s newspaper. I know what my role as a commentator should be so I refuse to be distracted by the incessant asininities produced by these newspapers.
All of the time, the facts I bring out in these columns get the incompetent policy-makers mad at me but my facts remain indisputable. The policymakers cannot prove me wrong so they resort to nasty language in the state media (including the quasi state media, Guyana Times)
I told my friend, Barrington Braithwaite, two weeks before Carifesta not to participate because he will not get paid. I gave Barry that warning because I know the people that run this country. What happened? A large number of Carifesta artists had to picket the Carifesta secretariat for their remuneration. Who was wrong? That is one example I will leave with you. I could go on to give you hundreds. Here is just one more. When traffic lights came in 2007, I predicted that with the pathological incompetence that characterizes the Guyana Government, those lights will break down. How wrong was I?
For two consecutive days, the traffic lights at the most critical junctions of Georgetown have not been working. The word “chaos” would be mild to describe what is taking place on the roads without these lights   Look at what time the Ministry of Works chose not to be on its guard – the busiest time of the year.
I left Kaieteur News office Wednesday evening at about 20.30 hours. At the corner of Avenue of the Republic and Regent Street, a minibus came within a coat of varnish in hitting me.
The lights were not working; there was a build-up, and the driver was too much in a hurry.
That near miss occupied my thoughts all the way home. I still can’t believe that bus avoided my car by the skin of my teeth. If he had struck me it would have been because the country’s government cannot provide its citizens with working traffic lights.
Enter Robeson Benn. This Minister and his Government attack me all the time but do they do their work? I am not afraid to criticize Benn and libel threats are not going to deter me.
Here is a Minister that travels up and down this country looking for what he calls encumbrances and obstructions and he orders their demolition.
But what about the other side of the coin? What about the maintenance programme of the Ministry of Works? Does that Ministry have a maintenance schedule? Sometimes this Government operates without commonsense.
This is the time of the year when traffic builds up to an unprecedented level. Which country does Mr. Benn lives in. He must have seen traffic jungle last year.
A simple management plan would have sufficed. Have a team of technicians monitor the lights beginning from December 15.
Is such an elementary idea missing from the Ministry of Works or is it that the Ministry doesn’t care. My answer is that this Government could not be bothered with the real side of development. The post-colonial mentality of bullying and coercion is the legacy colonialism left them with.
We will never know how many vehicles have been touched during the Christmas season but if you see the scary situation going on at those junction, then you will know it will be a countless number.
Why can’t this Government get anything right? One of the things that stuck in my mind for 2009 is a front page photograph of the Stabroek News of June 24. Women in large numbers came from all parts of Demerara at the Child Support office of the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court to receive their relief and left after waiting for five hours.
These were poor mothers, single parents and they left without a dollar in their hands.
When you write about this pathological incompetence, the little dictators vilify you. But are you wrong? That photograph in the Stabroek News wasn’t a fiction. It was about a fact that occurred. Was I being mischievous when I warned Barrington Braithwaite that he would not get paid?
Drive carefully today because I doubt working traffic lights will return today. Of course I will be criticized for making that statement as if I care what they say about me.

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