I will no longer write on these topics

Oct 14, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I made this decision on Thursday night after I swung from Lombard Street into Hadfield Street. I saw the same atrocity that I have complained about in these columns at least four times. As I waited on High Street outside parliament for the green traffic signal, I said to myself Guyana will not change, isn’t going anywhere, so I should drop this aberration of what I have seen from my repertoire of topics.
Here are some of them that will no longer be seen in the paragraphs of future columns. When you travel north on Lombard Street and you turn east into Hadfield Street, right at that junction, traffic is chaotic and there is no police regulation. As you go further into Hadfield Street approaching High Street, there are always two, sometimes three traffic ranks, doing absolutely nothing. Just about twenty yards away, there is traffic instability, yet these ranks are never at that junction.
I wrote about it four times before. I saw it last Thursday, and that’s it. This is the fifth and last time mention will be made of this stupidity. I believe there is a reason for that obvious asininity and it involves a certain type of conspiracy involving seniors at Brickdam traffic department. So it is not going to stop, and no powerful one in government will intervene. I do not see the point of repeating that rung out bell and sung out song in these columns.
Next – random police stops. From hereon I cease writing about it. I have covered this topic in three entire columns and mentioned it several times in other articles. For three consecutive years, the top brass of the police force have publicly stated that traffic ranks could only intercept a driver if an infringement is seen or in keeping with standard police procedure and “based on suspicion.”
I have written on this anomaly the past three years, given three statements on what I witnessed to the Office of Professional Responsibility, heard nothing further from that section of the force, keep getting calls from citizens around Guyana about random stops, and continue to see the habit almost daily. It is not going to be discontinued, because it is a way of shaking down drivers. It is going to continue because the political directorate and the top brass of the force will not intervene and put finality to the matter. I am finished with this topic in these pages.
Next – non-functioning traffic signals. I simply cannot count the numbers of articles on that negativity. It is time to give up on that. It simply makes no sense writing any longer on erratic traffic lights.
Next – constant breakdown of street lamps in the areas that envelop my residence. I use the Railway Embankment, the old highway that starts from Clive Lloyd Drive and of course UG Road, more than one time each day. The lights on all three major arteries have never functioned consistently over a three-month period. At this moment, the lamps from Giftland Mall to Sheriff Street have gone out for weeks now. Only two lamps are working on UG Road.
I am tired of carping on this concern. I have written about it too many times; it is time to move on. The GPL crew would come, install the lights on these three major pathways and literally one month after, they are all dead. Where I live there are two lamps on the Railway Embankment outside my home; one at the west end of my house, the other at the eastern side.
Those bulbs reflect in people’s yards that live there and you welcome the brightness, because it adds to the security situation. The eastern one has been out for years now. I never thought of complaining to GPL because they will come, the bulb will shine for a week or two, then, it will die.
Finally, for a long time now, over the long years that I have been a media practitioner, I have bitterly complained about the morbidity of sempiternal meetings of important decision-makers in both the private and public sector. These people are virtually impossible to talk to.
I know a certain manager of a bank in Guyana that is never in his office. On Thursday, once more I rang him, and it is the same thing over the years. This time the answering machine came on. I left a message asking him what is inside his office that so scares him. There is no point lamenting on this troubling aspect of life in Guyana. So I am done with that too.

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