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It’s impossible
Kaieteur News – If any Guyanese still need more revelations about how this country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) operates, it is the EPA itself that dishes out how it works. As the facts are examined, interested citizens should ask themselves a few sharp questions, given how the EPA carries out its duties as a state agency and what mysterious measures its staff use to say that they fulfill the entity’s many sensitive responsibilities to the Guyanese people.
The first question is who and what comes first in the visions, strategies, and practices of the EPA, local and foreign business interests, or the Guyanese people? Second, why does the EPA think that it has to go about its mandates through delivery of the questionable? Third, why does it believe that the jobs that come under its umbrella should be handled through withholding crucial information that could be of benefit to Guyanese, concerned about health and safety, and the kind of life that should be theirs? And last, for how long does the EPA entertain the hope that what amounts to nothing but shenanigans could stay out of sight, undetected, and not attract the worst of suspicions and heaviest condemnations from troubled Guyanese?
Those questions, and others not presented today, flow from the article that was titled, “Impossible to draw conclusions on new Demerara River Bridge in absence of key details -Environmentalist” (KN March 27). There was a Project Summary that is exactly what it is labelled – a summary. There was little by way of “relevant facts” and there was and still is no proposed project design attached to that summary. It is, indeed, the mother of all project summaries.
Residents in the area neighbouring the settled-for site, are in the dark and, hence, clueless about possible impacts of this new Demerara River Bridge on their lives, and associated quality. They know very little, since what has been shared with them, is almost nothing of substance.
Essential details on such issues as, “the scale, geographic placement, and relative layout of infrastructure, access roads to which the application refers, drainage systems that would have to be modified as stated in the application, or properties in the right of way that would have to be demolished” are missing. The lives of residents in the vicinity of the new bridge could be severely impacted, and they are still waiting to learn more from a state agency that is there to protect them. Who is protecting whom and for what reasons? More pointedly, who have the people running significant areas of Guyana’s EPA, been instructed to protect, which galvanised them into action, so that they rush forward to comply lock, stock, and barrel, even when this could mean that Guyanese pay dearly?
None of this is comforting and the facts are there to support the worst of conclusions. Outspoken Guyanese environmentalist, Ms. Simone Mangal-Joly noted that it took the EPA all of two days to approve the Ministry of Public Works application for an environmental permit back in late November 2021. This is remarkable for its swiftness, and unless the EPA had a slew of supporting details relative to the permit applied for, and stamped as received by the EPA on November 19, 2021, this approval cannot stand. The question could be fairly asked then, as to the basis on which the EPA issued its approval/waiver for the environmental permit on November 23, 2021, a mere two business days later. What did the EPA know, but did not bother to share with the Guyanese public, especially nearby residents, which is their business to know? What is it concealing? What kind of skullduggeries are at work, when the interests of Guyanese are sacrificed at the altar of government and leadership manipulations?
Not one of these questions speaks in favour of the honesty and integrity of the local EPA in the performance of its duties. Clearly, the absence of vital information does not lend itself to a balanced discussion or any kind of genuine consultation. When a government agency operates in this manner, it is obvious that the outcome cannot be healthy or helpful to Guyanese interests. When our own people are against us, Guyana’s goose is roasted and charred into the unacceptable.
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