The law stipulates that businesses can open after 4.30 PM

Feb 23, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
Last night I was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and came across the familiar quotation in a Latin form, “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat” which means in English “those whom God wishes to destroy he first drives mad” and that caused me to be reminded so much of the Georgetown City Council where there is so much of madness taking place.
Of most recent is the announcement in the press that Mayor of Georgetown is moving to have the capital city’s businesses closed by 16:30h each day, an announcement that sent shockwaves throughout the city. Clearly uninformed of the Shops Consolidation (Amendment) Act 2009 which extends the operating hours for regular shops from 07:30h to 22:00h; restaurants and cook shops for 24 hours per day; and parlour, barber and hairdresser establishments from 06:00h to midnight every day, she is instead quoted an obsolete law Act, which indeed at that time stipulated an early closure time for businesses.
But two questions have to be asked, the first being whether she and her relatives close their shop which they own in East La Penitence at 16:30 each day in keeping with the old act that she is quoting and second why is she seeking to enforce this archaic law now, a period that coincides with protest action that is being undertaken against the odious parking meter contract by the public at large, including the business community.
One has to hope that this position that she has taken along with destroying a bridge that was erected to facilitate the provision of free and convenient parking by an employer to his employees on Camp Street, and the removal of parking aids from a shopping mall on the East Coast of Demerara are not crude attempts at being spiteful, retaliatory and castigatory against the business community for their stand against the scandalous parking meters.
But if this is all being done out of a lack of knowledge that one has to wonder how the Mayor of a capital city could be so uninformed, and for how much longer must the citizens suffer whilst she is on a learning curve making colossal mistakes each day.
Mateo Phelephe

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