Central Government Must Respect Georgetown’s Autonomy

Dear Editor,

This letter seeks to bring forth some salient truths, hoping and praying to avoid further rancour and recrimination with respect to the existing contention between the State apparatus and the Georgetown municipality. The truth should allow us to set aside pettiness and prejudices to be reasonable and so save our capital city Georgetown, a place I have lived and loved all my life. I hope that the truth and the facts below would allow sanity, decency, and what we were earlier told is democracy to prevail.

First truism; Human history is punctuated with examples of unhappy events caused by beliefs and attitudes which have taken millions of lives, and caused misery, and suffering everywhere. In every case it is driven by men who hold fast to certain beliefs, determined to impose their views and proclivities on everyone around them.

Examples are many, but, I draw attention to just a few known to this and earlier generations; Lenin, Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, in each and every case there existed an obsession to have absolute control over capital cities, and key towns of a state. This explains why Adolf Hitler attacked Stalingrad in Russia, on August 23, 1942, this battle lasted until February 2nd, of the following year, with the loss of almost 1.8 million lives in less than six months, it was considered the most brutal of fighting in recent history.

I mention this, to establish that some leadership will stop at nothing in their quest to control capitals and major towns. This is unfortunate, but in our circumstances can be avoided, even as this weakness seems to be emerging in our Co-operative Republic Guyana. I present the facts as follows; when the PPP won the elections in 1992, the Mayor of Georgetown was Campton Young, a decent, highly religious gentleman, the new government so provoked Campton Young with their demands and crude efforts to control him and the council, that he and others resigned.

An Interim Management Committee (IMC) with a chairman, Dr James Rose was appointed to manage the affairs of Georgetown. Municipal elections were due, and were indeed held in 1994, the government poured huge sums of money, and machinery into the IMC for obvious reasons. Elections were held in Georgetown; it was a keenly fought three-corner contest. GGG-Good and Green Georgetown emerged with 12 seats, PNC- Peoples National Congress gained 10 seats and the PPP- Peoples Progressive Party 8 seats.

For brevity I will avoid intervening drama, save to state that this allowed me to become may or of Georgetown. When the IMC and its Chairman were demitting office, in spite of the largesse from Central Government, they stated that taxes, fines, and traditional sources of income were insufficient to provide an expanding Georgetown with satisfactory services, such as maintenance of the cemetery, garbage collection and disposal, a primitive dumpsite at the eastern end of the cemetery, five municipal markets, public health services, an abattoir, animal and meat inspection, a city constabulary for law and order, building inspection, construction and maintenance of roads in Georgetown, and drainage of a city below sea level. The IMC stated that the council needed additional sources of revenue.

When I assumed office I accepted this wisdom and purposed the establishment of a lottery, had the late Haslyn Parris prepare a draft advertisement to seek operators worldwide. This venture required the permission of central government, contact was made with the authorities, and Prime Minister Sam Hinds was asked to meet with a delegation to discuss, and hopefully to gain government’s approval to run the lottery.

The delegation consisted of Robert Williams, Philomena Shury-Sahoye, Ranwell Jordon, Premchand Dass, Rameshwar Ramsaroop, and myself. At that meeting we made a presentation and Prime Minister Hinds asked to be excused for a few minutes, he returned shortly after and stated that government could not support the lottery, since it was gambling and the religious community, to use his exact words “would be up in arms”. A few months later the government had a lottery up and running, and not one cent went to the city council.

Vital to the success of any enterprise, business, or undertaking is qualified, competent management. In every instance when the council identifies qualified persons, in particular the position of Town Clerk, the minister ignored the recommendations of the council’s personnel and training committee, and foisted on the council, during my tenure, not only an unqualified person but one of questionable competence, this of course made management awkward and tedious.

We looked at the problem in Georgetown and had a specially designed training program, where thirty persons were trained in the municipal laws, and how to approach citizens to seek their cooperation. These persons were called city wardens, and were assigned to each of the thirty districts in Georgetown, by clever manipulation this warden corps was soon dismantled.

I state another fact; a proposal by a Guyanese enterprise to bring in biodegradable bags for citizens to use for shopping, was enthusiastically embraced by the mayor after observing the banning of plastic bags in Antigua, I approached the government, through the ministry of Local Government, to ban plastic bags which were already and continues to be an environmental hazard. The government minister informed me that certain business enterprises had large shipments of plastic bags on its way, and that the government would therefore reconsider the replacement of plastic bags a little later, the rest is history.

Next, whenever there is heavy rainfall, we complain of blockages and unhappy conditions in the city. Yes, the Georgetown Mayor and City Council bureaucracy has failed to ensure compliance of our by-laws by citizens who block drains, are allowed to build bridges over waterways and wanton squatting making it difficult in some areas to maintain the integrity of our waterways. And there is an apparent reluctance or inability to enforce our by-laws, however, a major impediment is the inadequate movement of water from our several canals in Georgetown.

There are ten outfall channels beginning from Ruimveldt to the south to Kingstown in the north. Along the East Bank of the Demerara River, where kokers, sluices and pumps facilitate drainage into the Demerara River, the problem here is because of the sling-mud discharged from the mighty amazon, this sling-mud blocks all of our ten outfalls and the result is that all of our efforts are compromised by the constant accumulation of this sling-mud. The answer is to constantly dredge and clear these blockages so that the water, whether by gravity, or pumps can find its way easily into the Demerara River and at low-tide out to the Atlantic.

From January 1969, I was Minister of Works and Hydraulics and therefore responsible for sea and river defence. The responsibility to keep those channels clear was always the responsibility of Ministry of Works and central government. In the 1940s we acquired equipment named Sir Crawford, which was used to clear the outfall channels. Later a pontoon with a dragline was used. Various studies based on the movement of the tide, proposed where the sling-mud should be disposed, but that’s another matter.

As mayor I suggested that the channels be kept cleared throughout the year to ensure that the ten kokers preformed to their optimum. The question is; Is this being done? My information is, there is no regular clearing of these ten outfall channels, the responsibility of central government. And no further comment is necessary. However, like a glutton we are taking on additional things, before digesting what we already have to deal with.

This brings me to this absurdity, the recent claim by central government to sequester the facility in upper Water Street opposite Hope Street suggests that something has gone wrong.

As far back as I can remember before I held ministerial office, that facility was used by the Municipal House Service Department where the staff, employees of the mayor and town council, using three-wheeled motorised carts, serviced the mains and pipes within what was then old Georgetown. In all these years this is the property and responsibility of the municipality of Georgetown. During my incumbency the building was refurbished and used as a training center mainly for inductees of the Georgetown constabulary.

Second; we provided housing accommodation for those who lived outside of Georgetown. Third; we had stored there historical documents in an area we referred to as the archives. And fourth, a canteen was also provided where meals were prepared and served. Additionally this facility was used for meetings and the training of the bicycle squad. Its location on the waterfront, with a view of the Atlantic and the Demerara River, made this an attractive location, with the eastern boundary being in Water Street, a busy business area.

For years I resisted all kinds of offers from local and overseas persons, to dispose of this property. For the government, or anyone else, after 60 years of independence, to claim this property is beyond belief.

Another worrisome fact is, set aside the government’s failure to provide a satisfactory feasibility study for the gas to shore project, they are moving to take over certain streets in Georgetown and the area mentioned above, while spending in excess of 160 million dollars daily, I want to underscore “daily”, to provide electricity to Georgetown and elsewhere, yet on Sunday March 29, there was blackout in Georgetown from 3:41am to 6:00am and citizens in most of Georgetown were again greeted with another blackout at 4:20pm. Another example of an inability to satisfy your present responsibility, but taking on more. What is disturbing about this takeover of streets and the training facility is that the have been no discussion, and no consultation of any kind.

If by some legal gymnastics government can prove or establish that the Water Street property is theirs, the fact that this property, is occupied, controlled, and generally assumed to be owned by the M&CC before Independence, and undisturbed for at least four generations, the only proper and decent thing would have been notification, discussion, and consultation. The public must judge whether to use my favourite phase from Shakespear; Oh judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.