Guyana on Friday morning, May 28, 2021

May 31, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – On Friday morning at 8, my wife and I left for the Ministry of Health to get our second Covid-19 vaccine. It was raining heavily but we decided to get it over with since it was the due date.
Any little boy and girl, without turning 13 into being a teenager will tell you that in downtown Georgetown parking is not only impossible but frightening and dangerous. Absence of parking in Georgetown has literally killed off dozens of businesses in the capital. This columnist will not likely go back onto streets in Georgetown to patronage supermarkets, which I once visited almost daily the past 10 or more years.
Things are a bit more expensive at the supermarkets close by to where I live. But parking at those new places is literally like walking down a street that is empty. I damaged a newly bought, reconditioned car weeks after purchase trying to evade traffic going into Survival Supermarket parking lot.
Yes, prices are a bit higher at these new retail centres but your mental health is not endangered. My favourite pastry shop was Maggie’s on New Market Street. My wife and daughter only wanted pastries from that outlet. I stopped going there years now.
You have to park three blocks away to get to Maggie’s, by the Georgetown Hospital and even there parking is not easy. I did that but carried my dog with me but was told by the people at Maggie’s that dogs are not allowed. I wasn’t parking three corners away and leave my pet in the vehicle. Aubrey Baptiste of the famous Matt’s Record Bar (now closed) told me lack of parking facility dented his business.
We reached the Ministry at around 8:30am and there were five parking slots on the parapet right opposite the Ministry. All five were filled with small tree branches and limbs from a cleaning exercise that appeared to have been done a week ago. I asked every Guyanese wherever he/she is living on Planet Earth and who love this country the following question, How can any contractor clean the city parapets and leave the mountainous tree limbs right where they cut them down from?
I ask from the deepest chasms of my heart, how can any exercise be done so illogically and insanely? If parking is a headache, why would that contractor reduce the space for parking by encumbering the parapets unnecessarily? Is it not normal in any sane, rational, civilised country that weeders clean and remove what they cut down?
We headed east and turned into Vlissengen Road into Croal Street westward to come back to Brickdam since we were caught in a torrential downpour. We ended up outside the Palms two blocks away from the Ministry. You are not going to believe what I will now describe. If there is a God, he has to save the residue of commonsense of the people of Guyana.
One space was available outside the Palms and guess what? It was occupied with a huge black plastic bag stuffed with grass that the weeders cleaned at that section of Brickdam. It wasn’t our day. While walking through the rain, our free Digicel umbrella that I got six years ago broke and we got soaked. Here now is the graphic point that all Guyanese need to reflect on.
At our age, my wife and I cannot afford to get soaked in the rain. We got soaked because commonsense does not exist among the people of Guyana. If the cleaners had removed from the parapet what they weeded, then we would have taken literally three seconds to walk into the Ministry.
Now brace yourself for more horror shows on Friday morning, May 28 in a country named Guyana. I dropped off my wife home, picked up our dog to go to the seawall. On my way home, naturally, I take the Railway Embankment, the street on which I live. About 100 yards going west from Sherriff Street junction, my mobile phone rings.
I never answer the phone while driving and not on a busy highway. The simple thing to do is to pull up on the parapet. But the entire stretch of parapet from Sheriff Street to the Aquatic Centre was cleared and countless huge black garbage bags stuffed with rotting grass were left there, thus preventing parking.
Can someone email me at fredkissoon@yahoo.com and explain why parapet cleaners do not take away the grass. The stray dogs rummage through the bags leaving a terrible sight. Who in the central government or City Hall has jurisdiction over these contractors? Why they are not sanctioned for their incompetence?

(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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