Georgetown is a stinkhole

Dec 19, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Georgetown was once known as the Garden City. That was more than thirty years ago. It is now a stinkhole.
A popular slogan which is being bandied about is about a green state. But while one part of the government is moving in one direction, the other part is moving in the complete opposite. Instead of protecting the green parapets and malls, these are disappearing or being destroyed at a rapid rate in the city.
The green trees which lined streets in the city are dying out. The green parapets alongside most city streets are now destroyed due to vehicular parking. The green perimeter around the city is being turned into housing and commercial zones.
If you can’t even protect the once Garden City, how are you going to have a green state?
Many years ago, businessman Yesu Persaud recognised what was taking place. He had the vision to recognise the dangers which commercial expansion would pose to the green areas in the city. He knew that eventually all the green areas would be taken over and Georgetown would lose its traditional flair.
There was once a green section of the Bourda Mall between Alexander Street and Orange Walk which was popularly referred to as the Walter Rodney Mall. The area has large Saman trees which provided shade. Lanes for walking intersected the usually well- kept greenery. The Georgetown City Council levelled this area many years ago and turned into a concrete jungle and established a vendors’ mall on it. It is now one of the ugliest parts of the city.
The same fate would have befallen the area just west of the former Walter Rodney Mall, had it not been for Yesu Persaud, who helped raised funds to turn it into the Monument Gardens and thereby preserve one of the few remaining green areas in the city. The business community – the same section which some people like to lampoon about their lack of social responsibility – helped with donations to develop and maintain the Monument Gardens.
David de Caries, one of the founders and a former publisher of the Stabroek News saw other forms of decline. He saw the neglect of the walkways which separate the eastern and western carriageways of Camp Street. And so he started a project to resurface and upgrade those particular walkways, which incidentally just happened to be opposite his home. Today, now that he is dead, it is falling once again into decline.
Against this background, one may be easily deceived into thinking that the I Love Guyana Monument is a wonderful corporate gesture, aimed at restoring the beauty of the city and preserving the expansive green lawns in that area. The monument is located opposite the Umana Yana and the Court of Appeal, and is in front of the Guyana Bank of Trade and Industry (GBTI) and near to the Pegasus Hotel.
The I Love Guyana Monument does more for GBTI than it does for the city. You see, that area where the new monument is located is being used as a parking area, especially by the weekend nightly patrons of the Pegasus Hotel. As a result of the combination of the parking of vehicles on the sprawling parapets and the wet weather which makes the soil soggy, the parapets had been destroyed and become an eyesore.
The City Council was never going to designate that area as a no-parking zone, so as to protect the wide green parapets. And so, one suspects, the idea of the monument emerged as a substitute. Better to have a monument than a hundred cars parking every Friday and Saturday night on the greenery and destroying the parapet.
The private sector and social organisations are playing their part in rescuing Georgetown from falling into ruins. Had it not been for the efforts of private citizens, supported by corporate Guyana and others, the situation in the capital city would have been more decadent.
‘Local democracy’ – a most popular catchphrase these days – has not brought restoration to the city. So long as lawlessness – including squatting and illegal vending – is pervasive, then the city will continue to be a stinkhole.
The private sector and non-governmental organisations can only do so much. Those entrusted with maintaining the city have to shoulder the responsibility for restoring the city. But how can they be expected to do so when none can recall what the Garden City used to look like. If you do not know what the Garden City used to look like, how can you restore it?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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