Men risking their lives for the 50th anniversary celebrations

Feb 19, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is a letter in yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News that is more sad evidence of what a wasteland Guyana has become since the sixties. Of course I don’t expect the traffic signals at the junction of UG Road and the Railway Embankment, close to where I live, to be repaired, even though I wrote several times about how dangerous is the crossing there without the signals.
The Minister responsible to fix that, David Patterson, is a personal friend. I have not spoken to David since July last year when I asked him to intervene to get a cleaner paid. The cleaner had worked for a private contractor employed by David’s Ministry. The chap was never paid. I have not spoken to any Minister that I consider a friend the past eight months except Ronald Bulkan, to whom I paid a formal visit on Wednesday on behalf of an employee.
I am convinced that we are dealing with the same overdeveloped state that this country lived under during the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal. In the compound where I live, water has been gushing for several days outside my neighbour’s yard. We reported it three days now to GWI. They aren’t going to come, because the overdeveloped state does not operate with the concept of service to the population. The overdeveloped state is driven by the need to use and expand power.
Yesterday I went into Budget Supermarket on Sheriff Street, and one of the friendly attendants, Ramona, rushed up to me, “Please Mr. Kissoon, you have to write about the Georgetown Hospital; I had my sick baby at the emergency and the waiting was really, long; why you have to wait so long?”
Strangely, there was no vexation on my face. I was smiling when I said to her; “Do you know how many times I have done that?” As I walked out of the supermarket, she beseeched me again. I promised to write. I am writing it here. But centuries from now, Guyanese will complain about the Georgetown Public Hospital. Poor Ramona! She will live her decent life, work hard for her income, but may never understand that her country does not exist. Her baby will grow and take winged impulse, finally finding peace of mind in another land.
Here is an extract from that letter which has the title, “Do lives matter in this country?” What you are about to read is pathetic, but the bitter irony is that this disrespect for human lives was part of a programme to celebrate 50 years of Independence. The psyche is lacerated and the tear will never heal once Guyana is like this.
Here is the quote; “The photo captured workmen manually lifting what appears to be a 10’’x 10’’ greenheart plank, up the steps of the temporary seating accommodation for the Republic Flag Raising ceremony. This photo is troubling because it appears that the safety of workers and visitors to the site is being ignored. Not only were the men not attired with the requisite safety gears, but one of the said workers was barefooted…Some visitors who appeared to be integrally involved with the execution of the project were also observed without safety gears.” (End of quote)
Well, you cannot get a greater irony than that. Here is the country planning a swashbuckling, coruscating celebration to mark not five years but fifty years (which is half a century) of Independence and a graphic manifestation of it is barefoot workers manually fetching poles up the stairs of a podium, when the machine to do that was invented more than fifty years ago. But the irony has a joke to it.
Here is a country in the 21st century that banned used tyres and imported cars that are over eight years old, but has labourers fetching huge poles up the stairs of a platform, the very platform that speakers will use to offer gigantic panegyrics to Guyana for accomplishing fifty years of Independence.
Here is another quote from that same letter written by Jeumayne Dummett; “It is frightening to imagine what would have been the result if an accident was to occur”.
I do not want to be cynical with Mr. Dummett, who is an educated man, but I am tempted to ask him which country he lives in. He wrote it would be frightening to know the result if an accident had occurred. Such accidents have occurred in the past in this country and the results have been horrible. And all because lives do not matter in a primitive, parched landscape like Guyana.

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Men risking their lives for the 50th anniversary celebrations

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