How we reached this state of affairs

January 15, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under Features/Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source

Shame is a terrible burden to carry, and at most times, almost impossible to admit. One way of dealing with or avoiding shame is to deflect it by blaming others.

Take for example the situation with respect to Georgetown. The unsanitary and disordered state of the city, the flooding and the garbage pile-up, the squatting on reserves and the illegal vending is not an overnight phenomenon.

These conditions were not created under the PPPC government. Long before free and fair elections were held in 1992, the city had deteriorated.

The City Council, which is responsible for the maintenance of municipal services had failed to collect garbage on a regular basis, failed to keep the drains clean, failed to keep the pavements clear, failed to maintain the cemetery and failed to even spend enough on its own headquarters, City Hall.

Garbage had begun to pile-up to the extent that residents were forced to light bonfires to burn their household waste, because it was no longer being collected regularly. Roads were heavily potholed to the extent that a major road-rebuilding project had to be launched by the incoming government in order to repair these roads which were the responsibility of the City Council.

Lands aback of the cemetery were converted into a dumpsite. It was a perennial eyesore and almost to its last days, unmanageable. The physical condition of markets had begun to deteriorate and vendors had begun their influx and occupation along the pavements of the city and outside of the bus parks.

The state of Georgetown did not decline under the PPPC. It is not the PPPC which is responsible for the state of the city. In fact had the PPP not spend the billions that it spent on municipal roads in the wards of the city, most of these would have been impassible today. Had the government not intervened and repaired the pumps, the flooding situation would have been dire a long time ago.

A few years ago, just a few years ago, there was a big public outcry over the state of the cemetery in the city. The council charges citizens for burial plots but fails to maintain these plots. The cemetery soon became impassible. It was turned into a jungle with huge trees and overgrowth concealing the tombs.

Persons turned up on Mother’s Day only to pay their respect to their loved ones. But they could not penetrate the jungle to locate the tombs of their loved ones. Many left in tears, frustrated and hurt.

The government intervened and cleared the heavy overgrowth which the Council had found so difficult to do. A helping hand had been lent to the Council and it was for them to restore the cemetery from which thousands are collected for each spot. The cemetery has returned to the jungle.

The fetid material that exists in most drains and alleyways today have been there for years and successive attempts at cleaning them have not been maintained by the Council which has always had the resources to pay contractors to undertake these works but has never been able to ensure sustained and routine cleaning after the contracted gangs had dredged the drains and the alleyways.

Desmond Hoyte, the former President of Guyana, did not mince words when it came to his assessment of the Council, which included some of his party’s own councilors. He considered the Council as having failed and felt they should all be removed. He was forced to ask someone from the private sector to undertake cleaning of the city. This is the extent to which he had lost confidence in the ability of the Council to fulfill its mandate.

When people therefore seek to blame the PPPC for the present state of the city, they are not simply ignoring who it is that has ultimate responsibility for the state of the city. They are at times also ignoring the process that led to this state of affairs and at other times they are simply deflecting the shame that is felt, because the parties they supported have proven so incompetent in administering the capital. This failure is the source of shame that they wish to be deflected.

Instead of deafening cries for the Council to go, especially in light of the incessant flooding of the city, there continues this shameless charade of calling on the government and its officials to take the blame.