It’s mind boggling to have a failed mayor for 16 years to run the city

Dec 02, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
The recent and present flooding in Georgetown and around the country has nothing to do with the vague warnings from the hydromet office but the total neglect and incompetence by the present administration. The massive flooding in 2005 was another act of negligence and not ‘acts of God’ or acts of nature.
I will begin this discourse from my observation in Georgetown. Not long ago, I was at the National Hardware Store in Water Street. The rains came suddenly and lasted for about twenty minutes. The entire street was flooded in that short period of time. I took a taxi to Regent Street and that street was flooded too and the entire city.
We can’t get rid of water from drains 18 inches deep that are blocked up by bottles, food boxes and garbage. The entire city needs a new system of drainage whereby these drains are about six feet deep and the water can move off the land at a rapid speed into the bigger trenches and canals. All these drains and trenches need to be maintained by constant cleaning and fogging for germs. The entire Garbage City Georgetown needs to be fogged.
The City Council needs to be removed and replaced by a team of competent and diligent people from a community to administrate the City. It’s mind boggling to have a failed mayor for 16 years who is over seventy years old to run the city. He should go on pension twenty years ago. We have too much old people in our offices with no proper modern vision to run the affairs of this nation. Our parliamentarians are old, senile, and brainless; that’s why these folks suffering from all types of mental and physical diseases fight and cuss more in parliament rather than taking this nation forward into the twenty first century.
The entire city is loaded with street sellers,touts, thieves, gamblers and idlers. All these people selling on the pave and street corners harbour criminal elements around their stalls. I see more sellers than buyers in Georgetown that has now become a ghetto town.
Everyday, these sellers and store owners will throw tons of garbage on the city streets. We should have laws to persecute them for littering. All these street sellers should be removed and be given a specific market to sell. It will make the city cleaner and healthier. I even see bus operators, taxi drivers, and even police officers throwing garbage in the streets like food boxes, plastic bags, and drink bottles. Those who make the laws break the laws and we have become a land of the lawless.
Flooding have now become something we are always faced with. Where I live in Agriculture Road,the water in my yard runs out in a trench. This trench is blocked up with thick bushes and rubbish like wood, iron and garbage in some parts. The NDC never sent a hymac to dig this trench. I have to clean my part but manual cleaning is no good, it needs digging. Where I have my church in Block 8 Mon Repos,the trench there was never dug; the trench and dam look just the same. Thirty minutes of rain will flood that entire community.It’s about time the Minister of Works and our Agriculture Minister do some studies in drainage and irrigation. Many people homes are flooded out they lost millions in stocks and household items. Who will now compensate them for their losses.
Some of the men who operate the pumps are drunks, the NDC chairmen and women are sleeping at home while the entire communities are flooded. Residents are paying taxes to be given back a service to their communities but that is not happening. May I ask, Mr editor, what are they doing with our tax payers money? It’s time the citizens of this country stop paying taxes until we can be given value for our money. A few months ago I applied to the NDC in Lusignan for a compliance. I paid for it and was told I will get it the next day. Why the next day since all my taxes are paid that compliance should be in their computer all they had to do is put my name on it print it out and sign and stamp it. I made several calls and was told the chair woman has to sign it. I made several calls to contact her, but she was never in office. After ten days and over 100 phone calls I was given the compliance.
It’s no small wonder we still have blackouts, internet shut down, potholes everywhere and thieves and criminals all over the country. It’s all because of negligence and incompetence.
If our present administration cannot deal with simple drain cleaning and trench digging then it’s not possible for them to govern this entire nation.
Rev.Gideon Cecil

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It’s mind boggling to have a failed mayor for 16 years to run the city

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