GEORGETOWN IS HEADED FOR RUIN

May 11, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Encouraging illegal vending and restoring Georgetown are two incompatible objectives. The capital city can never be restored to any state of orderliness if illegal vending is not wiped out. Encouraging vendors to remain on the pavement will not lead to orderliness.
By now it should be clear to the government that it makes no sense trying to restore Georgetown. This is a lost cause. Georgetown cannot be restored, ever. It is destined to undergo further decline and to end up in ruins.
It does not matter that all the businesses exist in Georgetown or the prime real estate. Commercial activity will eventually move to areas contiguous to new housing settlements, the two largest of which are at La Parfaite Harmonie and Diamond.
The latter, Diamond, will become the new capital of Guyana if care is taken to avoid the same mistakes that are being made in Georgetown. There has to be proper zoning and there has to be zero tolerance for vending.
As such, the government should work with the neighborhood council- eventually to become a full-fledged municipality- to design a plan for the development of Diamond as a township.
The commercial banks have sensed what will eventually emerge and this is why they have established branches in those communities. The area already has a diagnostic hospital. It needs playfields and recreation centres and it will be ready for township status.
Already real estate prices in Diamond have soared and they will not get cheaper. The prices of property in that area will rise steadily and will eventually match that of the prime real estate in other parts of the country.
Within the next twenty years Georgetown will be a ghost town and therefore there may be a desperate attempt by those who have sunk large investments in Georgetown to support its restoration.
No restoration is possible, however, when persons are being overtly encouraged to squat and vend all over. There are parts of central Georgetown that some citizens do not venture into because the traffic is chaotic, you hardly have space to walk on the pavements, it is nasty and there are illegal vendors all around.
This situation with illegal vending has long got out of control. It is not, has never been, about the poor trying to survive. Those who vend are not there because of poverty. They are there because they are being allowed to get away with it and when this happens what inevitably develops is an uncontrollable situation.
This cannot be good for business. Imagine you establish a multimillion- dollar business and then someone comes and squats right in front of your business, taking over the parapet and everything. Customers no longer want to venture into your store and you lose.
How can this be right? How can businesses be asked to pay millions of dollars in rates and taxes on top of income taxes and yet someone who is not part of the legitimate economy and pays no rates and taxes to the municipality is allowed to illegally compete with your business on the condition that they place their rubbish in a plastic.
No society has ever developed when there is such a flagrant disregard for the law and when this disregard is openly encouraged. It is law, however inequitable and unjust it is, that protects the citizens and ensures stability.
When there is disregard for the law, including constitutionalism, then those who need protection will wake up and find that the law is not there to protect them and the inevitable consequence is anarchy.
The tragedy of Georgetown is not that it cannot be restored. It can be restored if there is a commitment to law and order. Georgetown does not need a restoration plan at present. It needs local government elections to allow for local democracy to prevail.
The greatest tragedy is, however, that local government elections will not bring about change. The people of Georgetown will go to the polls and return, this time with a larger majority than in 1994, the very forces that have overseen the ruination of the capital city.
Georgetown in any event is terminally ill. How more irredeemable can things get than having persons, some of whom were said to be illegal vendors, picket the Ministry of Local Government calling for the removal of the acting Town Clerk?
And this is why it is a waste of time and money trying to save the city. Government and businesses should begin the long process of relocating and allow the city to die a natural death.

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GEORGETOWN IS HEADED FOR RUIN

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