From blackout to blackwater

May 06, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – One poor Chinese engineer made into an example. Excavator overreach. Transmission line downgraded. Guyanese degraded. Again. The richest people in the world reduced to a running joke. Again. They reach for candles and kerosene; gas stoves can’t start. Every home, each family, should operate as if in Iran. Have an emergency drill ready. Fair and well in the high probability event of a long running blackout, Turkey boat or banana boat, for all the effects those have. Blackouts (no pun) generate headlines. In the next tortured breath, what about blackwater? Don’t stiffen people at the GWI; not today. Blackwater and stagnant, stinking, sickening pools of water. How come those don’t make headlines when they cast a constant pall, a fouling smog, across Guyana’s crowded capital, and its blocked, locked, and well-stocked streets? Plus, its drains. Right by the ankles, often closer to the knees.

One poor Chinese engineer jailed. How about jailing all those careless, contemptuous contractors, whose building refuse (rocks, sand, cement) clog drains and bring once moving waters to a standstill? The contractors cover over their crimes. Nice grill work, even a concrete bridge that conceals the pileup underneath that’s the result of their labours and cavalier negligence towards government assets and a healthy environment for Guyanese. How about clearing up the infernal mess while work is in progress and after the work is done? Before the PPP Government, and its doctor president, I table this quietly: how about curing these accursed contractors that cause discontent and disgust across the city, throughout the country? Have they been immunised from jail for the crimes that they inflict on Guyanese wherever their homes are? These swaggering, wandering marauders and desecrators of pristine locations and environments operate with impunity, get away with the viral/bacteriological afflictions they dump on Guyanese. If a man were to let loose a germ into the atmosphere, he would be treated as a subversive. So, why Pres Ali, why Dr. EPA Parsram, why Mr. Mayor Mentore and Mr. City Engineer (and Dr. Climate Change globetrotter) are these culprits allowed to roam at will and inflict their diseases on Guyana’s populace?

Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo, it’s the same ugly, unhealthy, unseemly story. Progress and development races at breakneck gallops. Guyanese should not be made to pay in pain, as part of the price of progress, having already paid a barrage of dollars. The flies feast. Rodents roam ravage. The grounds are rich, the waters-blackened and deadened-promise of what is laden with peril. Pass a street, survey a community, and there is a trail of evidence from contractors busy at work, in the hulks, bulks, and detritus left behind. City and village are forced to deal with that, conduct their own grim postmortems. From all indications, the contractor class is a protected class under PPP Government schemes. Who knows better how the tender award game is played? Who knows best on how to work a system that is about sharing arrangements, whether called cut, kickback, or personal thanksgiving?

One poor Chinese engineer is arrested. For busting an electricity wire. Meanwhile big contractors, medium-sized contractors, block and blacken the drains and deposit before Guyanese feet and faces a swarm of bacteria. Another day in the life of this country. Contractors saturate citizens with the equivalent of germ warfare, and there are few whimpers of objection from PPP Government councils, and town and village councils. Blackouts have an urgency about them, with thousands by the tens and hundreds of them, rising and raising their voices.

Blackwater and bacteria-filled water impact a street, then another, and are literally underfoot, which makes them out of sight and, hence, out of mind. A score of citizens in a street isn’t much to make noise over. The trouble is when the streets extend and multiply, when citizens increase into the hundreds (for a start), and that becomes a crisis. Contractors must clean-up after themselves or jailed, like that poor Chinese engineer.

(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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blackout, Blackwater, Chinese engineer, GHK Lall, GWI

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