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Guyana is disordered
I hate to sound like V. S. Naipaul, but it is a problem enough when you are a small country. Imagine, therefore, the problems that arise when you are a small, disordered society.
Guyana is a country with a small population. The small size of the society is further compounded by the ever-increasing disordered nature of the society. No matter what wealth is discovered within this small economic space, is not going to benefit the population much, unless the disorders are ordered.
With each day this task is becoming difficult. Two examples will suffice to explain the dilemma which the government and any future government will face.
The British may have been exploiters of our national patrimony; there may have been extreme levels of poverty and inequality, but at least they left us with some idea of how to create an ordered society. This is best seen within the capital city.
The British left us with a fine laid-out city, carved out from the coast and designed in rectangular grids with most streets at right angles to each other. Alongside some of the streets were main canals into which small drains flowed allowing the city, constructed on slightly sloping lands, to drain easily. The streets were wide, creating space which allowed the small city to breathe easily.
A few days ago, I was walking along the avenue on Main Street and it struck me how beautiful a city the colonisers left us. Here in the heart of the city, were avenues which divided Main Street, Carmichael Street, Waterloo Street, Camp Street, Thomas Street and East Street. This is an example of the sort of attention that was paid to order by the British in their design of Georgetown.
Can you imagine what Georgetown would be like if we had to design our own city? Guess what, I am sure there would have been none of those avenues. In their place would have been houses or businesses. We would have tried to crowd every single available piece of land in the city. Driving through the city would have been like driving through a tunnel.
Right now there is mass disorder taking place within the city. All over the wards of the city, small businesses are popping up. Many of these are in residential areas. Zoning is out of the window. All around you drive in the city you see bottom houses being converted to all manner of businesses.
It is difficult to comprehend how permission is being given for small businesses to be opened in residential areas. Certainly all of those businesses would have needed the permission of some central authority to convert all these buildings into business places.
If this permission was indeed granted, then there is a serious problem in this country, because it has created a quite disordered city with business springing up here, there and everywhere.
It would be interesting to know whether all of these businesses that are springing up are licenced and whether those issuing the licence are checking to see whether permission has been granted to establish these businesses in the areas in which they are located.
One wonders also how come there is a policy of no businesses in new housing areas, yet many businesses are now popping up in these areas. Are these businesses registered? How can they be registered when they are in breach of the very policies laid down by the government?
The government should seriously consider a site audit of all the small businesses, including cake shops and snackettes, which are mushrooming around the country, to determine whether the requisite permits, including tax registrations, are in place.
Guyana needs development; but Guyana needs ordered development. No amount of economic growth is going to translate to a better standard of living for our people unless something is done about this chaotic development that is taking place, especially when it comes to land and property use in the country.
The British left us an authentic and well-designed town, Georgetown. We have not created any other town since then. We may have named other places as towns, but these are not genuine towns, since even today, many lack the infrastructure and the zoning rules to be classified as towns.
Georgetown is a dying city and sadly, it is still our only city. If we are to reclaim it as a genuine town and if we are to move forward and create other towns, whether primary or secondary, we must halt the continuing disorder that is taking place right now.
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You are so correct,