There really is little more that can be said about the customary depositing of piles of garbage on streets and parapets and in drains in the commercial areas of Georgetown save and except that that there is no evidence whatsoever that the municipality, the state or the business community are prepared to treat the practice as a problem deserving of urgent remedial attention. Nor for that matter do many of the commercial houses, some of whom recruit junkies to dispose of the plastic, cardboard and other remains of the day, care much for the consequences of their callousness.
These, mind you, are some of the very business houses which, in all probability, are members of the various business organizations that convene one forum after another to engage in protracted discourses on the virtues of Corporate Social Responsibility and the consequences of the same kinds of environmental recklessness that are practised every day by some downtown businesses.
The amazing irony of the situation is that the business community appears to have settled for a perpetual repetition of the financial loss and considerable physical inconvenience that occurs when the filth-choked drains result in flooding in downtown Georgetown. The repeated dumping of garbage in the city is, in the first instance, a reflection of an appalling, nay, unfathomable stupidity that simply does not bear thinking about.
Save and except the occasional sanctimonious verbal outburst by some incensed public official nothing sustained, nothing serious is ever done to address the problem. The collective corporate will to muster a robust response to the problem simply isn’t there.
It really is a matter of a distressing unmindfulness of the quality of the environment in which we conduct our commercial affairs and a perception of our capital not as a valuable piece of real estate that facilitates the perpetuation of our commercial culture but rather, as an area of space to be abused.
Inevitably, the role of the Georgetown City Council in providing the capital with efficient garbage disposal and beautification services arises. But what more can we possibly say about a municipality that has become so burdened with the weight of its own seemingly permanent bureaucratic and internal administrative problems that it is, unquestionably, altogether incapable of discharging even the most basic of its responsibilities to the city?
What then about the collective role of organizations like the PSC, the GCCI and the GMA? Does their repeated advocacy of Corporate Social Responsibility not commit them to galvanizing the business community as a whole into a heightened awareness of the importance of safe and responsible disposal of the garbage generated at the end of a day’s trading? Where exactly does the issue of the state of the city feature on the agendas of these organizations?
And since it appears that various umbrella organizations are prepared to do no more than talk about the problem couldn’t the government use its clout – as it does with other issues – to mobilize the business community and the various other stakeholders behind it in an effort to ensure that our capital is saved from becoming one huge garbage dump?
Or is it that no one really cares? That all of us have learnt to live with the filth and squalor that has come to characterize the commercial environment and that the occasional verbal outbursts about how filthy our city is, are no more than contrived attention-getters designed to create an altogether false impression of caring?
Last week two senior PSC officials cited the dumping of deposits of commercial packaging near the corner of Regent and Wellington streets and openly declared that, in all probability, it was done by one of the city’s large trading houses; not an itinerant vendor but an established trading house. The two officials made the customary utterances about corporate social responsibility and talked about the need to impose a ban on the use of plastic beverage bottles and styrofoam packing, telephoned the Mayor – for whatever reason – and promised to place the matter on the PSC’s front burner.
The problem is, of course, that a stage has long been reached where talk is simply not enough and nothing short of tangible and concrete action that yields relatively quick results will persuade anyone that the powers that be are serious about responding to the garbage crisis in which the city is well and truly immersed.
