Dear Editor,
The front page of another Sunday newspaper featured an item on plans to spruce up the Stabroek market clock, an historical landmark. The GINA photograph showed top brass of the city council and the government in an on-site conference, and they looked as if they meant serious business.
The excellent photograph showed clearly the clock. the hands of which read 7.21. It could certainly not have been 7.21 p.m, and if the gentlemen concerned had indeed been conferring at 7.21 a.m, that itself has to indicate an extraordinary dedication to duty by all.
But I do not somehow think this was the case at all; the Stabroek market clock, as it was for so many years, remains broken down.
The news item did not specifically mention the clock, but hopefully perhaps the authorities will be including it in the facelift work programme. It has always baffled me that the clock has defied attempts to repair it. It is a mechanical clock, and some of its component parts must be missing, or worn, or broken. Spare parts for obsolete items can nowadays be fabricated to as-good-as new.
I can, of course, speak only for myself, but every time I pass the Stabroek market and glance up at the clock, only to see it non-functional, there is an ever-increasing feeling of depression that if this icon, this “symbol” even, of our city cannot be put right, what hope is there of other things being put right?
Again, I can only speak for myself, but conversely, if one morning, I were to pass by the market, and the famousc clock were observed to be ticking away, it will be the first step in a returning optimism on my part. And I dare to say, in many others as well.
But in any event, we would surely not be wanting our foreign visitors, as they tour the face-lifted Stabroek market, glancing upwards at the clock, and then smugly sniggering to one another, that time seems to be standing still in the city of Georgetown.
Yours faithfully,
Josh Ragnauth
