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Predicting the continuation of evil
Nov 28, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Here is an extensive extraction from my November 15 article on flooded Georgetown, titled, “25 Minutes of Evil.” “I did not count the duration of the rain but I am inflexible on the time. The downpour lasted for 25 minutes. For sure it was not beyond half an hour. As we drove back home from Carmichael Street, most of the roadways we passed were flooded.
Citizens’ yards were flooded, my nephew’s included. You cannot read about it. Even if you watch it on video it would not be potent in your eyes. You had to be around in those 25 minutes to see the failure of Guyana.
“What is so frightening in this country is that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that if 25 minutes of rain can bring such swollen streets what would four hours of a downpour do? If you saw College Road between Brickdam and Hadfield Street in Wortmanville on Monday where the technical head office of GT&T is located then you know that GT&T cannot avoid total wreck of its lower buildings if we have eight hours of a thunderstorm.
“We are talking about a national disaster if we have those four hours. We are talking about the devastation of Georgetown if those four hours go into eight hours. We are talking about the erasure of Georgetown if those eight hours repeat themselves the next day. In celebrating 21 years of office for the PPP in Lusignan, Bharrat Jagdeo told his listeners that Guyana is a good country and they must not be disillusioned by a few clogged drains (see my response to Jagdeo’s horrific statement, “No one in Lusignan and Guyana can be that silly,” KN, Wed., Oct 19, 2013)
The most horrible aspect of that deception is the word “few.” I need not repeat my argument here because not only Georgetowners but all Guyanese (yes, all) in this land and the Diaspora know that Georgetown as a city is immensely clogged with a drainage system that has been blocked up for all of the twenty one years of PPP rule.”
Yesterday my prediction came through. It was the entire Georgetown that was flooded. It was not confined to downtown Georgetown. It was all over – it took in Kitty, Campbellville, Wortmanville, Lodge, and Prashad Nagar.
One day I looked at the gutter that runs along Garnett Street in Newtown when that road meets Middleton Street and so thick was the mud that I said that if the rains came it is going to flood that area. Well, yesterday, it happened. I saw it. We are creeping towards a major national disaster. We are seeing it but the entire population of this country stays silent and refuse to act.
More than any anti-money laundering Bill, more than any Procurement Commission, more than any Local Government election, the major priority for the people of Guyana is to drain and clean the place wherein lies the nerve centre of Guyana – Georgetown. I repeat; if the Private Sector Commission is a patriotic body it will insist that the Government of Guyana drain and clean Georgetown.
There is an additional problem that adds to the nightmare. Construction in Georgetown is adding to the clogged drains. Go to the site of any large construction and you will see what they are doing to the drainage system. And no one in authority can do anything about it.
There can hardly be any question about it, Guyana is worse than a banana republic. Look at the misery this country goes through with floods every year and poor Georgetowners are the main victims. These people’s houses are inundated and they loose what they cannot afford to buy back. What happens if the rains go on for the entire month of December?
I am not on FaceBook but I am dead sure that pictures of flooded Georgetown yesterday went all over the world. Those who put up those pictures need to state that Georgetown looked like that after ninety minutes of rain. They need to tell people that a major national disaster will inevitably occur once the rains go beyond four hours. But it can be avoided. We just have to let our voices be heard.
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