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Swimming in ignorance in Stephano’s pool
Jul 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In my last column (Sunday), I pondered about how strange life is. How can life produce the type of leadership we presently have in Guyana? In the July 8 edition of the Stabroek News, Mr. Neend Kumar not only delivered a blatant fiction to the public but displayed some ignorance about engineering.
So egregious was this display of asininity that it further embarrasses us as a nation. But as they say; “It could only happen in Guyana.”
We must always remember when the PPP pretenders to knowledge make frightening inanities (maybe I should title this column, “bonfires of the inanities” because it is time the PPP does away with its permanent mediocrities), the Caricom Secretariat with its many Caribbean citizens are located in Georgetown.
First, Mr. Kumar said that the Colgrain pool used to be open all day and all night. What a terrible fiction to so barefacedly make! Mr. Kumar obviously hasn’t been to that site since Rupert Murdoch bought over News of the World in 1969.
As you enter the entrance to the pool, emblazoned large on the notice board, are the opening hours of the pool. Since its inception, the facility has had closing time at 18.00 hours. It is simply untrue to state as Mr. Kumar did that “it used to be open all day, all night.”
Secondly, the Colgrain structure was never open to the public in a way that the average person would think. The only public swimming unit Guyana has ever had was the Luckhoo Swimming Pool on the Atlantic where the imaginary Marriott Hotel is to be located.
At Luckhoo’s, you just walk in and swim. There were absolutely no conditions. For me, that is the true meaning of public. Thousands of poor south Georgetown children learnt to swim at Luckhoo’s. It was at this site that my wife acquired the skills as a high school student. My learning came from the Kitty seawall.
To get into the water at Colgrain, you have to possess membership of a club. The Castellani pool is for the elites in Government. The Government has a third pool; the Olympic one across from where I live (was on the Plaisance seawall jogging last Friday and saw the structure for a private pool being built at a mansion at Pradoville 2. No former leader in CARICOM has a private residence pool).
The two current public pools are not open to the general (emphasis on general) public. I doubt the third will be. This is a government whose ruling party has in its constitution the adherence to Marxism-Leninism.
As soon as they open their mouths, they tell you they are leaders of the working classes. Sir Lionel Luckhoo never professed to be a communist yet when as Mayor of Georgetown he built the Atlantic structure, it was available to every citizen at all times.
I hope that DDL and Banks DIH, two companies with whom Neend Kumar has a close relationship, will give him a Christmas present of a DVD copy of the great movie, Dr. Zhivago.
He will see that Lenin put all available resources at the disposal of the working people. All the Tsarist mansions were turned into living quarters for the Russian masses.
Most appalling but not surprising is Kumar’s jejune exclamation that the Colgrain pool will now be used only for people doing therapy and for learners, the reason being to preserve the life of the construction.
If this isn’t ignorance then Hitler is still alive. One hopes that Mr. Kumar’s phenomenal knowledge of engineering is not adopted by his bosses at Office of the President and in the Cabinet.
According to “Kumarian” logic, roads, streets and highways will have to be used only at select times during the day because they need to have long life.
Of course, public buildings like Camp Ayanganna, the police stations, the post offices, hospitals, NIS, and GRA will only see three days a week work. UG which should have closed down a long time ago will probably only open its doors once a week.
Sadly though, the Essequibo ferry will only operate every two weeks so as preserve (the word of Kumar) its life. No need to go further with Kumarian masturbatory rationality. Has this gentleman ever heard about maintenance?
Things will last forever once you maintain them. How can anyone be so stupid to say that a swimming pool should not be used often because you want it to last a long time? Some advice to readers; don’t drink and drive, don’t drink and swim.
Writer’s note: Stephano is a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
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