Government buying land to expand post-colonial bravado

Oct 11, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Why does the Government want to buy private land to expand the Attorney General’s Office? Why does the Government want to purchase private land to house the constitutional reform committee? There could only be one answer. There will be different answers from the government’s side but only one objective answer stands out for this columnist. It is part of the post-colonial copying of Europe where the State has big building and large structures.
This is what most Third World regimes did after Independence. They wanted a large residence for the Prime Minister, a presidential mansion, huge ministerial buildings, six-lane highways, etc. Fifty years after Independence, the Government wants to extend the Ministry of Legal Affairs and the Office of the Attorney-General.
For a country whose population has declined drastically the past forty years and is steadily declining, what more space does the AG’s office want than what it has presently on Carmichael Street?
But even if one can muster a valid argument for the extension why must the connecting building be built on Carmichael Street and for that purpose the State will buy private lands. What is the argument for physical proximity? The US has fifty states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and those two States are very, very far away from continental USA. The Caricom Secretariat is located in Guyana and sections of it are in Barbados. The United Nations is in New York. Parts are in Switzerland and France. What is the point about physical closeness? The Office of the President is spread around Georgetown. The Presidential Secretariat is on Vlissengen Road. At the junction of Durban Street and Vlissengen Road there is a branch of the Office of the President.
Guysuco’s showpiece is in Skeldon. Its head office is in Ogle in Demerara. SOCU of the police force is located at Eve Leary. The same police force has a crime intelligence unit in the compound of Castellani House on Homestretch Avenue. Why can’t there be an Office of the Attorney-General in Ogle or in Kingston or on Homestretch Avenue? Why must the new structure adjoin the original building on Carmichael Street?
Why spend money to forcefully buy out private land when Guyana has massive state lands throughout the territory of this nation. The Coalition just built a humongous structure on Homestretch Avenue and named it Durban Park. Right next to Durban Park is nuff more state land. Opposite Durban Park is the empty land where once stood the Ministry of Labour. In Kingston, near to the Ministry of Finance, Transport and Harbour has a huge piece of real estate.
Why does the Government want to forcefully buy out private land on Carmichael Street when there is a colossal piece of land opposite the Botanical Gardens? It is owned by Continental Agencies. But there is a catch to this land. President Desmond Hoyte sold that site to the private entrepreneur with the explicit agreement that a hotel and holiday resort would be constructed. In other words, the price was cheap because Mr. Hoyte wanted to see a project go up.
That site remains unoccupied. I would suggest that the Government look at the original agreement to see if the contract under which the land was given was not honoured in good faith. In such a situation, the land could be repossessed even using the very law that the State is invoking to buy the private lots on Carmichael Street. It is more than twenty years since that particular land was sold to Continental Agencies and it is just lying there unoccupied.
It is not only public land that is available to the government but also buildings. I don’t believe the State has taken an inventory of all government buildings. There are plenty spaces in many public institutions and unused structure that go way back to the Burnham era. But I don’t think that inventory will be done. The instinct is to continue the show-off that came in the immediate post-colonial period.
What is mind boggling is the very government that can only afford a ten percent increase to the poorest sections of the public service is willing to spend money to construct new offices. And the compelling question is to do what? Why not spend that money on washroom facilities in public school for the nation’s children. Oh, don’t forget we cannot replace Camp Street prison because of lack of funds. But we could shop around to buy private lands and build new government structure on them. Shakespeare once wrote,
“But man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape.”

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