Georgetown looks like a cross between a mini-metropolis and a shantytown

Feb 20, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A visitor who has never been to Georgetown will end up with a headache if he or she takes a walk around the commercial district. He or she will see nice buildings, great stores, mini shopping, malls and good restaurants. But the visitor is also going to have to deal with vendors who are popping up all over the place.
The visitor can come to only once conclusion: that Georgetown is developed but it lacks order. You can hardly walk on the pavement on Regent Street, because of the vendors and the businesses which are encroaching onto the pavement.
What impression is all this illegal vending making on the minds of people who are coming to Guyana? It is a disgrace that businesses have invested so much money to have modern stores and yet you have vendors squatting all over the place making the city look like a shantytown.
The PPP/C was blamed for having a dirty city. But if you take away the garbage and the clogged drains and the vendors, Georgetown never looked as good as it did under the PPP/C. They skyline of Georgetown was transformed under the PPP/C and it continues to be transformed.
People blamed the PPP for the dirty state of Georgetown, but the same people who blamed the PPP are realizing that Georgetown was always controlled by City Hall, which has to take responsibility for the services which they failed to provide in the past and which they still not providing.
The City is returning to its former glory ugliness. The stink, fetid drains have returned. The canals are overgrown with rubbish. Stabroek Square has been restored to its former confusion. City Hall has an unenviable record when it comes to not being able to maintain this City in a good condition.
Now we are told that it is registering vendors. We are told that more than 300 vendors have been registered. This figure understates the number of vendors because many did not register because they feel that the list may end up in the hands of the Guyana Revenue Authority. Many vendors are afraid of the GRA because they are making more money than the stores, especially since the parking meters came into being.
The pavement vendors have turned the City into an eyesore. Does the Ministry of Tourism think that visitors from overseas are going to encourage their friends to come to Guyana? These visitors cannot walk freely in Guyana. There is no pleasure in shopping. The whole city is turning in a free-for all. People are selling wherever they feel like.
A food business has sprung on a road reserve in the City. It is doing so much business that at nights there is usually a traffic jam in front of the business.
The City has implemented parking meters in order, they say, to restore order. Yet you have a caravan selling food on the side of one of the main streets in the City, occupying a spot which could have been used for parking.
The government said that it will regularize squatting on government lands, yet over the holidays squatters were building permanent structures on councils’ reserves. Town Hall took no action.
Yet if City Hall notices a load of sand in front of the residence of someone who is paying their taxes, they will question you as to whether you got permission for the construction that you are undertaking, however minor that construction may be. But when existing squatters were building concrete extensions during the Christmas holidays, City Hall seemed to be on vacation.
Squatters are defecating over the canals in the City. If cholera breaks out in Georgetown, it will wipe out half of the population of the city. Yet no action is being taken to remove squatters from off of government reserves, especially those who are dumping their bodily wastes into the canals.
The problem with Georgetown is not the government. It was never the government. It is the City Hall. It is time to build a new capital city. Georgetown cannot be restored.

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