Dear Editor,
It is not good to be too agreeable, as it sometimes takes disagreement to stimulate thinking, correction, new knowledge and access to information. Frequently, I write with this aim in mind. If I am wrong, I am confident there is always someone out there more experienced and qualified who can re-direct me.
I am therefore delighted that Dr. Steve Surujbally in his letter, “The law provides maximum weights for dray carts” (08.01.26), has finally disagreed with something I have written, and in doing so, he has done my homework for me, for the animal rights activists and for dray cart owners. I had promised myself, over the next few days, to look up the laws of Guyana concerning animal haulage, as I had mentioned in my letter of January 17, 2008, but I must now thank Dr. Surujbally for providing same.
After double-checking, I must say that the ‘intellectualized’ animal haulage figures I quoted were for the larger more powerful and well-fed European draft horses. A pair of massive Shires was once estimated to have pulled about 50 Imperial tons, way beyond the capacity of any pair of Guyanese ‘magga hawses’.
From the laws of Guyana, I can now safely say that the maximum mass that can be hauled by a single-horse four-wheel dray cart in Guyana is 2,200 lbs (a tad less than 1 Imperial ton), equivalent to 24.4 bags of cement at 90 lbs per bag. The Cullen Bess-Nelson photograph showing a horse pulling a cart loaded with about 30 bags of cement is therefore right: the cart driver is guilty of cruelty to an animal. Find him, haul him to court, and fine him. (I hope my friends at the Guyana National Bureau of Standards forgive me for using Imperial units.)
Dray cart owners must be educated on the weights and measures for items frequently carried on carts. Notices of such weights and measures must also be placed at loading docks and freight businesses frequented by dray carts.
The presence of certified loading inspectors at those places would certainly help cart drivers to adhere to the law, what with the sub-culture of overloading and questionable vehicle maintenance that they have similar to the minibus subculture. If loads are too heavy to be hauled by animal-drawn vehicles, then buyers of materials must use mechanized vehicles (and contribute to CO2 emission and global warming).
What is also missing from this discussion are the opinions of the cart owners and drivers themselves who certainly do not have the level of lettered eruditeness as do the animal rights activists. Their views ought to be properly canvassed, as it is so unfair and unbalanced to omit from the equation the perspectives of those who have generated the equation. They, too, have a story to be told.
The telling of their side might even open their eyes, like Balaam, and make them kinder to their charges, who unlike Balaam’s ass, cannot complain.
Yours faithfully,
M Xiu Quan-Balgobind-Hackett
