Dear Editor,
The Minister of Local Government fired off. The Georgetown mayor fired back. City residents, businesses, and local and foreign travelers are caught in the middle. Something will have to give. I call for a ceasefire. A civil conversation can then follow. Put the old, nasty, dirty, politics in the garbage can (and move it away). The people are punishing. They dare not breathe. Unhealthy. Unlikely to contribute to personal safety and sanity.
The air is that bad. Garbage all over and up to the foreheads. Talk about stink and dutty, and GT is it. How could any minister, any national leader, any councilor, and any mayor preside over such a repugnance? And all that they are capable of is shouting at each other to score political points? To give their bases some fuel to carry to the next day, and the next argument. The garbage monstrosities are visible, can’t be pretended not to be seen, or known. They are not post-holiday buildups, but every day and for many a long day now. Where is the value in a ‘world-class healthcare system’ when citizens and visitors in Guyana’s capital city are treated to a last class environment?
Mired in garbage. Trapped in the stench that is almost like a smog over the city. Unsanitary is one matter. Unhealthy is the bigger concern. Finger pointing, from whichever direction, doesn’t remove one sack of rotting garbage, doesn’t clear one clogged drain, doesn’t address the removal of one rat. Ever see one of those creatures? Enough to send the weak of spirit scampering for safety to Caracas. It is not just garbage, which seems to be the focus, and the basis of the reciprocal salvos from minister to mayor. It is all three, and it is long past the time to talk politics and be about civics. What benefits the people? What gives the capital a brushoff and dusting off, and a different look and smell?
The garbage humps and dumps in the capital provide sustenance for the rodents that grow in number and size, too. They don’t spread good cheer. They spread diseases, and they are all over. The drains are stagnant and contribute their own odors to the atmosphere, instill their own anxieties. Am I going to get sick? When is something doing to be done? Not with one, but with all three (garbage, rodents, drains)? Together that fearsome threesome seem like a specter, a self-fulfilling prophesy. If not addressed quickly with energy and determination, it will not stay still. It will not get better. It will get worse.
Are politicians still wrangling? Then, I denounce them, whether red or green, or whatever. Somebody, some side, has to wave a flag, take the first step, say the first conciliatory word. Better if done in tandem. If not, then not at all. With not one damn word from those who fill the already overheated air with more hot air. The state of the city environment requires more than a temporary fix. Like it or disparage it, Georgetown is the face of Guyana. It is this country’s signature statement of where it is, where it is going. Silica City will wend its way into the consciousness in due time, but may come to represent nothing but a segregated resort town, a great adventure in political financial engineering, which it’s already shaping up to be. All the while, the capital stagnates, atrophies, and is left to die a slow death. In some ways, my sense is that Georgetown is lying in state. Representative of the lies and deflections of politicians for generations.
The garbage remains underfoot, if not at the shoulders, long after the quarreling has eased. The drains are still seized up with nowhere to go. And, the cats and dogs run amok. Those are my euphemisms for the rats that run all over. The city could be sitting on a time bomb; likely more than one, when refuse, drains, and rats refuse to move. When warring politicians refuse to do anything, but make speeches that play well before their people. Whoever is serious about the city, I challenge to stand up and make a difference. A long-term one. The president has a blueprint, and I laud that development. But that could take years before coming to some level of fruition. Meanwhile, the city and the country, all are involved somehow, are trapped in decay and stalemate, and a crisis that has the potential to batter silly.