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Laparkan arson
Kaieteur News – The acting head of the Guyana Fire Service has come out and declared the recent devastating Laparkan Shipping Company’s Storage Bond fire as an act of arson. This certainly adds a whole new dimension to the destruction, and brings more perspective to what was initially thought to be electrical in origin. It boggles the mind that someone acting in cahoots with others of a similar malicious mindset would want to burn down a bond that houses mainly goods. In view of some information that is now closer to centre stage, involving storage of a specific kind of materials, a slew of questions now arises.
Who would want to burn down a private sector entity operated bond that brings in barrels and packages and the like for ordinary, sometimes dependent, Guyanese from their families? What possible profit could flow from thinking of, planning, and executing something of that nature? Perhaps, the most important question of all is this one: what is the significance of the presence of the chemicals stored in the bond for a foreign oil company? That is, what role did its presence play, if any, in the fire, this act of arson that resulted in millions in damage and scores of working-class Guyanese out of a job? We refuse to speculate and let the Guyana Police Force take matters from here.
But there are some things that we at this paper would like to go on record as saying. First, setting fires for almost any reason, some frivolous, some fascinating, has taken on a life of its own in Guyana. Close family members, either drunken or addicted, vent their anger and get even by burning the very homes in which they live in, but which a parent or sibling laboured long and hard to put together. Second, our much disputed and long stretched out last elections season saw several fires in different places being deliberately set, and involving government buildings or offices. Third, family members in stormy court proceedings on occasion run ahead of the law, or sabotage the expected outcome of the law (against them), and set fire to whatever property was the subject of the family dispute. Fourth, a prisoner acting alone, we have been told, vented his frustrations by the easy convenience of shockingly and mysteriously available tools to burn down the flagship and longstanding Brickdam Police Station. Fifth, a patient also allegedly acted identically in a moment of madness at the Cardiology Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
From the available public evidence and related police charges, it appears that fire is the weapon of choice unleashed in wrath, and with terrible consequences, for any number of grievances on any place and any object that attracts such incendiary attention. Now this brings us back to the damaging Laparkan arson case. We are hard pressed to believe or accept that this fire had any vicious personal element involved. After all, it was a storage bond that held a few vehicles and the usual barrels and such. Also, the opportunity for looting looks remote. Given the items coming usually and legally imported into the country and housed there, one wonders if it is too much of a stretch to think that some sort of cover-up was at work, with an act of arson furnishing the means to remove whatever evidence was around. Though not unlikely, it looks remote from our perch, like that of disgruntled employees.
There were, however, chemicals for a foreign oil company that were there. It certainly gives off the picture and smell of a possible smoking gun, a probable link to what is now costly in its consequences to many others. By now, there is general awareness that increasing number of Guyanese are deeply angry over the insulting and cheapening manner in which the foreign oil companies have dealt with Guyana, and continue to deal with Guyanese, without regard for their humiliations and their cries. This is loaded and fraught with possibilities, if such could ever be proved, of where matters could have deteriorated, the passions washing over and taking hold. By the process of elimination, we look at what is there, and what is left. There is not much, otherwise.
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