Laparkan Fire – what happened and for what purpose?

Jan 31, 2022 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Today, I put something before my fellow Guyanese, which I ask them to consider carefully. It has to do with the Laparkan fire, which is now swiftly fading into the mists. It is of the issues surrounding what it was, maybe what it wasn’t, or what it could really be, which when reconciled leaves us in a possibly tragic way. Any Guyanese with a single strand of what is about the destiny of this country in him or her, and the significance of what is at stake should absorb what I present, make their own notes, and proceed from there.
The first words in the immediate aftermath of the fire were that it looked like something of an electrical nature. Close to that was information that chemicals for an unnamed oil company were stored there. We need no introduction on the devastations that can be wrought from electrically sparked conflagrations given long experience. Also, chemicals have their own elements that do not retard rapid spread in such a situation, but actually perform as a galvanizing accelerant. It could have been one or the other, or some combination of the two that contributed to the flare that is now the disaster delivered. Citizens losing property, dependent ones out of product and luck, workers out of bread, and a company that grew up with us, now out in the wilderness of forced crisis. Those must all be lived with and dealt with in some manner, perhaps partial, maybe not for a while. I refrain from saying never, because the scattered pieces of shattered lives will be picked up, with moving on following in some manner, to some degree.
From those some scattered pieces trouble came, which is putting things gingerly. One very senior official stepped forward and attested that it was a clear case of arson. In a millisecond, another from another official place came out and asserted that it was not. Which is it, and what is truly what? Presently, there is eerie silence and mystery, and seems favoured to be so, since in matters like these in Guyana, there is this hasty retreat into oblivion. It is part of the settled governance culture of this land that unpleasant and inconvenient issues such as this one involving a fire are better left alone, with all moving on to the next thing. Murders grow cold, and so do fires. That is, if people who are bright a certain way have their way.
Now, by accident I stumbled across a possible piece of the puzzle. It is part secrecy, part epiphany (for me), and could be about many parts of what is dirty. It could be the beauty of what one leader hailed as progress and development in another era (he was covering for washers and fetchers). I call it the acceptable price of tolerable collateral damage. My information is that an oil company, a foreign one, has (had) huge interest in the space occupied by that bond, and which served as a fourth utility in this country. I take that first piece (clue) and connect it to the paramount place of waterfront real estate in the calculations of finders and producers of Guyana’s wealth that is exported. Then, I attach another dot/piece to the importations that are essential to the work related to the exploitation of local wealth, and there is the commonsense extrapolation/conclusion that wharfage and storage space is direly needed, and there is that Laparkan Trading bond standing in the way. Well, that’s an obstacle that cannot be allowed to stand. After all, look at the purpose and people served. They are not of the less than one percent controllers of this nation’s prosperity and promise; they are not of the political power structure. Those people are expendable. Correction, their interests are.
Editor, there may be disagreement with me. But suddenly that conclusion and counter-argument for and against arson begin to take on a different shape. We have had this before here, which I remind with the laughable situation where bandits were executed long after the Mashramani jailbreak and a ranking law enforcement man hustled forward and said that his people did the killing work. There were late, not there. In view of the combustible elements embedded in this tragic fire-arson to not arson, to electrical, to possible chemical, to one feeding the other-and given the scope of the schemes made possible by that burnt out space now vacant, the thinking part of me probes for answers. I ask whether this was not a case of making things happen, so that others can be possible. I worry if powerful men, those with a record of ruthlessness globally, did not orchestrate the removal of an obstacle. And I inquire if this was why there was that quick, efficient media position of arson, then its opposite, from officials, who should recognise arson when they assemble near its detritus and sentinels, human or electronic. Then, only for that (arson) to be shrouded and ambulanced away into the growing wasteland that is of Guyana’s many diseases, now infested and tormented by the biggest one of all. It is oil. Finally, if it was not another instance of foreigners using locals for dirty jobs, starting with government. Has control of this country passed from our powerless hands?

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

---

---