Grasscutters are going to blind or even kill someone one day

Dec 02, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There was a wooden bridge over a trench on Cemetery Road. The planks got loose. The planks were shooting in the air. This bridge was dangerous. This death trap was there for all travelers on Cemetery Road going south on Princes Street to see. The municipal authorities knew about this precarious thing.
One day, an employee of Nigel’s Supermarket, struck the planks. The motor cycle and rider were pitched into the air and death was the result. The City Council went the very next day and started to build a new structure. The death of a young man, in the prime of his life, had to be the factor to galvanize the City Council into action.
Harry Brijmohan, a staffer at Kaieteur News, was 27 when he died on the East Bank Demerara four-lane highway. Each morning, the police open a part of the one-way, south bound, eastern lane to two-way traffic. Harry going home, riding south, moved from behind a vehicle and went into oncoming traffic. He probably didn’t know what the police do every morning.
Since Harry’s death, the police have put cones along the section where the lane is made available to two-way traffic. If the City Council had shown commonsense that Nigel’s Supermarket employee would have been alive today. If the police had applied commonsense and used the cones, I would have seen Harry smiling as his normally does when I go to Kaieteur News this afternoon. At the head office of the trade union NAACIE on High Street Kingston, there is a little bar run by the union.
One night, I was in there. At a table imbibing were three men. I only knew two; Attorney –at-Law, Gordon Gilhuys and then Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President, Nanda Gopaul. People always call me to make reference about something in my columns. Gilhuys called me to the table, pointed to the third gentleman and asked me if I knew him. I didn’t. Gilhuys introduced me to one of famous bakery owners in Guyana, Mr. Graham. Who in Georgetown doesn’t know about the landmark- Graham’s Bakery at Third and Cummings Streets? I never got to know this famous face because he died one week after I was introduced to him
He made a left turn from Lamaha Street into JB Singh Road, missed the street and ran into the trench. He died by drowning. The same week, a fence went up around that part of the trench, no doubt courtesy of Nanda Gopaul who had big power at that time under president Jagdeo.
Today, if you miss the turn as Mr. Graham did, you wouldn’t die as Mr. Graham did. When I came home from studies abroad, I use to take the UG bus from what used to be Central Garage. There was a man of unsound mind roaming the area with huge obstacles in his hands. Georgetowners knew about him. One day, this lunatic picked up an empty coconut shell, hurled it into a man’s head and killed him.
These things happened in Guyana, are still happening (though in different forms) and will continue to happen. Have you ever looked at the front windscreen of the Rav 4 I drive? If you haven’t, then please look at it. It has a crack that is five years old. My wife and I were returning home after dropping off her sister at the airport. In the vicinity of the Bounty Chicken plantation, the weeders from that particular NDC, sent a brick onto the windscreen and cracked it. I pulled over to complain and to seek compensation from the NDC. My wife simply insisted that we go our way. She is like that. My vehicle still has that broken windscreen.
In my compound, I live two doors from Ms. Verleen Klass. Ms Klass is a nice, friendly neighbour. Last Tuesday, her weeder was doing the parapet outside her residence and a small piece of wood struck me under my right eye as I was driving. I was extremely lucky. One day, a person is going to lose an eye or maybe even die from a flying object from these weeders who are ubiquitous. These grass cutters carry a bag that covers the blades or twines but they are not used in Guyana. The flying objects are prevented from flying by the bags.
Amazingly, the cutters are always decked out in a cloth face mask to protect face and eyes and they have long boots. We are not going to compel them to use the bags until someone is blinded or is killed from a flying object. But this is Guyana.

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