The sight of human misery around Georgetown

Jul 02, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Georgetown is the Capital City of Guyana but it’s in a very bad state because
of the amount of vagrants, touts, beggars, thieves, and white collar crooks. I wish to
begin my discourse with the vagrants. The word vagrant can be defined as:
”One who has no established residence and wanders idly from place to place without lawful or visible means of support.” As I walked around the Guyana Post Office Corporation building I counted over twenty vagrants sleeping on card boards boxes. They eat there, sleep, urinate and defecate that makes that place a living hell for shop-owners, citizens and those who worked at GPOC. But they don’t stop there they extended their living quarters down to Fogarty’s building doing their same filthiness but the Administrators at City hall put a blind eye to all this filthiness from these vagrants.
Their urine and faces stinks from a distance and it attracts lots of flies. Near GPOC have places that sells food and snacks and Fogarty’s still have their Rose Bud Cafe. How insanitary is this for those who sell food there to inhale the stench from these vagrants worst yet to sit and eat while smelling the stench. It makes us looks really bad when foreigners visited the Rose Bud Cafe to eat. We have a large number of new Ministries with lots of competent educated ministers but none seem to see these vagrants and a building to house these vagrants that makes the city worst than a pig pen. If it’s the Ministry of Social Protection or the Ministry of Social Cohesion or The Ministry of Human Services they need to build a living quarters for these vagrants to keep the city clean. They will clean them up, train them and put them on a rehab center since most of them are very young and they can work their lives are destroyed by drugs and alcohol.
City Hall is very busy with parking meter to suck every dollar out of the citizens of Georgetown they should now be busy to build a house for these vagrants and women who begs with over six children on the pave for us to have a good and green clean environment. We have endless beggars all over Georgetown most of whom are women with children these same children from unwanted fathers and poor mothers grow up to be bandits and criminals. Millions were wasted on the Jubilee; why not waste tax payers’ money by building homes for the poor and needy and help them and their children who beg to be a better citizen of this beautiful land of ours? I hope the Minister of Finance will put housing for vagrants in his next budget. Guyana is a nation dying slowly in poverty and human degradation while our leaders drive Hummers and Cadillac’s.
Now I come to the touts they make the bus and car parks a living hell and they rob people from time to time or set thieves to rob people. They need to be picked up by the police and be given jobs to clean the city. These touts are all over from the courts, GRA, Immigration, Banks and other Ministries they always seem to be connected to a white collar criminal in an office who can get you a document instantly for a nice fat price. So we can still see corruption is still the order of the day you are pushed around daily at offices for a document all because you have to ”grease somebody palm with some greens” Is this the good and green economy we want for Guyana?
The thieves lurk all over from banks, courts, Embassies, Ministries watching like a vulture from a mountain who to pounce on next. We now run out of jail space for young thieves who just want to live like parasites on innocent citizens who work hard for their money. If we enforce more serious laws in Guyana we will live in a better society it’s very sad those who make the laws break the laws. Drugs destroy people it drives them to be thieves and vagrants yet many law makers calling to legalize marijuana smoking.
Guyana needs a new vision of honest political leadership that will take us into this new contemporary era for us to compete with the world. We must have a vision to eradicate poverty from our society, begging, stealing, corruption and crime. Crime has plagued this nation for a very long time. What Guyana needs is a better economic policy, by implementing better salaries for her citizens of at least $140,000 per month for the average government worker. The police, teachers, public servants, and labourers will live in Guyana and not run out for better jobs and living standards. We have to learn to keep our people. If the politicians can eat turkey and steak then we ought to be able to afford the same. A true leader will put others before himself because of his love and concern for his people.
Rev. Gideon Cecil

1 thoughts on “The sight of human misery around Georgetown”

Muhammad Raoof July 2, 2016 at 3:42 pm

Great observation, but there was one key point missing. The politicians of Guyana do not care for those unfortunate souls who have fallen on hard times, due to in many instances, not their doing……Guyana politicians are there just to fill their pockets, make nice speeches, but forgetting to perform the DUTY they were elected for… the duty of serving the people.