What really matters are the concerns and public health interests of the citizenry of Georgetown

Jan 19, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – I was born at ‘N’ Bent Street Wortmanville, in the city of Georgetown. At that time, midwives were invited to homes to deliver newborns. Later we moved to 13, North Road Bourda.
I recall both Bent Street and North Road being very clean streets at that time, with grass parapets well kept by men using hoes and scythes; by early morning trucks that sprayed water to wash the streets as well as neighbourhoods kept free of garbage by men who came early each morning behind City Council garbage collection trucks marked: ‘Help Keep The City Clean’ to empty the ‘rubbish bins’ as they were called at the time.
The incinerator adjoining the Le Repentir cemetery was the place where garbage from around the city was burnt and destroyed.
At the head of each alley-way criss-crossing the city, was a roughly, 10×10, 4 feet deep dump site, boxed with wood where persons were allowed to dump small amounts garbage.
Garbage collection trucks would collect garbage at those locations on a daily basis.
In those days, there were no CCTV cameras to spot persons who risked being arrested and charged for dumping garbage. But there were City Health Inspectors who were assigned to the various Wards of the city to check on sanitation conditions in yards and other locations prone to dumping garbage.
Throughout my entire boyhood days I lived in the city of Georgetown. I consider myself a ‘City Boy.’ Those were the days when Georgetown was a truly ‘Garden City.’ I have witnessed the gradual transformation of the city from what it was in the 1950’s to present. The changes are truly remarkable in one way or another.
In those days, neither Bent Street nor North Road could be considered a Naipaulian ‘Miguel Street.’ And although Bent Street was in the Southern part of the city and North Road, as its name indicates, at that part of the city, there was no discrimination as regards the municipality’s efforts to keep the city clean.
Bent Street was populated predominantly by working class African-Guyanese while North Road was populated by a mixture of working and middle-class African-Guyanese, Portuguese, mixed-race and Indo-Guyanese.
The street reflected a true Guyanese blend of working and middle class residents.
My entire adult working life was spent in the city.
Georgetown has changed considerably. Though many of its iconic wooden buildings, large and small have survived, several others, either as places of worship, entertainment, employment or simple residences are now a mere tracing of the city’s architectural history.
Wherever fire struck or the elements associated with tropical weather conditions or plain and simple neglect consumed beautiful wooden edifices; concrete, steel and glass facades have triumphed.
A peculiar skyline, more semi-modernistic but not in any way reflective of the city’s Roman-Dutch architecture is gradually emerging.
The city’s transformation, marked by the ebb and flow of its multi-ethnic populace, the sale or rental of once-upon-a-time residences for city folk for the purpose of establishing large and small businesses and offices in every nook and cranny, including areas that were once garages and passage-ways, have brought in their wake, an increasing number of challenges above all, the dumping of garbage, blocking of alley-ways and overnight springing-up of huge piles of garbage.
The vendorisation of pavements and parapets; newly emergent hot dog carts, fish and chips wagons, dog food stands, music and coconut water carts, clothes stands at almost every street corner; the unimaginable and at times uncontrollable flow and congestion of traffic at all times of the day, as a result of what appears to be a shortage of traffic ranks, compounded by ‘easy to get,’ rent or borrow motor vehicles, not to mention the container and sand trucks that traverse city streets by day and night, have, in sum, given rise to several challenges. The orderliness of the city being one of them.
Cumulatively, these sometimes welcomed, sometimes unwelcome developments that form part and parcel of the City’s transformation has, at the same time, etched a blot on the once proud image of Georgetown from being a Garden City to a repugnant and a much despised notion of being a ‘Garbage City.’
It in this context, that the recent President Ali-led efforts to clean up the city must be commended. It is an exercise that was long overdue.
Nor should the exercise be viewed as a one-off attempt aimed at impressing our Brazilian visitors nor to garner support come local government elections.
The PNC/R‘s attempt at a balancing act by expressing on the one hand, its ‘Understanding the relief felt by citizens,’ that; ‘a cleanup of the city is welcome and that ‘… a cleaned city is good’ but on the other rubbishing the cleanup campaign, just don’t cut it, more is needed rather than critical support for government’s efforts.
It was not for the lack of effort by previous PPP/C administrations, to stamp out this anti-social practice and to make its disappearance unachievable. Previous efforts notwithstanding, the dumping of garbage continued unabated and developed as an unwelcome malpractice perpetrated by a lawless and uncaring lot.
Our own City Hall, teetering on the verge of collapse, is now a mere shadow of its once magnificent and imposing presence in downtown Georgetown.
The building’s hideous appearance and its dilapidated state is emblematic of the years of neglect and mismanagement ever since the Council fell into the hands of the rigging cabal. Small wonder why the citizenry would say time and again: ‘If they can’t manage the affairs of the city how can they manage the affairs of the country?’
It cannot be for the lack of financial support from government that has caused the City Council to fail in its responsibility to keep the city clean. On the contrary, it is a lack of imaginative and new thinking on the Council’s part as well as its failure to engage in constructive dialogue with government and to reach out to city folk, especially the business community that has caused those who now control City Hall and its Council to be unmasked with the advent of government’s efforts to clean up the mess in Georgetown that they have so unrepentantly facilitated year after year.
Maybe the PPP/C ‘won’t have political control of Georgetown in the foreseeable future’ but it’s not control that matters. What really matters are the concerns and public health interests of the citizenry of Georgetown.
With the strong commitment and deep interest manifested by the Irfaan Ali administration, the task to keep the city clean is now at the top of government’s agenda.

Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee

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