Have people really forgotten the hardship and expense of the 2005 flooding?

Jan 30, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
As two Guyanese living abroad we had the great pleasure of vacationing in Guyana recently. We noticed many improvements to infrastructure and living standards. Life in many ways has become easier. However, what we also noticed was a marked deterioration in attitude towards caring for the environment especially in public spaces.
Refuse, especially styrofoam from take- out food, drinks cans, plastic and glass bottles litter every public space.
Many waterways within Georgetown and other towns and villages are stagnated with fetid waste and overgrowth.
We are not implying that litter is exclusively a Guyanese problem. However, what reflects a very ‘relaxed’ attitude is the willingness to leisurely sit amidst this non-decaying filth, e.g. the sea wall seating area in Georgetown or the deliberate littering of beaches in spite of adequate signage asking users of the beaches to take their rubbish home. Vehicle users thoughtlessly fling their waste out onto the roads and therefore usually someone else’s village as they speed by. The wealthy of Bel-Air seem quite happy for the other side of their high fences to be dump zones. While businesses dispose of whatever is unwanted with impunity. On local TV there was advertising for a particular beer urging drinkers to collect the beer caps for a little prize. Nothing about returning the empty bottles, which were strewn about everywhere.
Yet many of these Guyanese litterbugs when abroad will readily adhere to the rules around rubbish clearance without too much persuading. On one occasion when we remarked to a friend about his attitude to disposal he replied, “This is Guyana”.
Active efforts to protect coastline with replanting of mangrove, while being hugely important, is pointless if those mangroves eventually die from suffocation and clogging by plastic and styrofoam. Protecting the rain forest is laudable and progressive and has worldwide significance, but since most Guyanese never move beyond the coastline, how can they environmentally value unseen rain forest when they are so prepared to litter their immediate surroundings? This attitude is reinforced by the near absence at the municipal level of refuse disposal services, which were present and functioning up to the late 80s, both in Georgetown and New Amsterdam. Canals and drains in both places are so overgrown, it is hard to distinguish what is road and what is not. Maintenance of the waterways seems to be a forgotten luxury rather than an efficient effective means of keeping the water flowing.
Have people really forgotten the hardship and expense of the 2005 flooding in Georgetown which was exacerbated by junk and unchecked growth clogging the canals and kokers?
Tackling this issue through accountability of those privileged with public office and local municipal responsibility, education in schools, awareness advertising in local media, and making businesses pay for some clean up might be an idea. But until resident Guyanese take ownership and individual responsibility of their spaces both private and public, the neocolonial attitude where it seems we only obey the rules in the ‘White’ world will continue to perpetuate.
Michael Mahadeo Misra
Anandi Mahadeo Misra

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