Business Editorial

The sight of heavy duty vehicles leaving the various shipping ports bearing the weight of laden storage containers is an encouraging one since it provides some indication of the volume of local commercial activity which, in a worrying economic environment, certainly cannot be taken for granted.

However, and without gainsaying what, in one sense, is the reassuring sight that these juggernauts   represent, they are, in another sense both a nuisance and a dangerous menace.

We have commented on at least one previous occasion on the fact that shipping containers are a substantial addition to the congestion that already obtains in the commercial areas of the city and on the fact that far too often their unloading and removal takes several days during which they remain outside business places.

What an official of the City Council told us some time ago is that the problem of prolonged container occupancy of parapets on city streets has to do with the fact that the proprietors of already crowded stores in commercial areas actually use the containers as temporary storage bonds so that the unloading process happens in stages rather than all at the same time – so to speak. What we found strange at the time was that the official was quite prepared to proffer this explanation but appeared not to recognize that there was something that is, quite simply, disgusting about the practice.

The available evidence since our last editorial of more than a year ago is that as far as the protracted stay of these containers in busy city streets is concerned the City Council has been unable to eradicate the practice.

But the problem does not stop there. Because commercial and other forms of activity that require the delivery of containerized cargo is not confined to commercial Georgetown, the trucks must travel long distances over roads that are not built to bear their great weight and into residential areas where the side streets are even more vulnerable, where parking is a considerably greater challenge and where protracted stays mean even greater inconvenience and congestion for residents.

There is something patently absurd about what appears to be the turning of a virtual blind eye to what, on the one hand, is the infuriating nuisance that this practice represents and, on the other, the attendant cost in damaged streets which often remain in a state of disrepair based on a line of reasoning which says that the containers will come again anyway. Certainly, where, as is commonly the case these days, large business establishments are set in the middle of residential areas, the container menace becomes a permanent condition.

If we have little choice but to accept the reality of containers traversing the streets and congesting our parapets and side streets,  we surely ought not to be required to settle for what, in far too many cases, is the permanent inconvenience, damage and dislocation  that they represent.

If it is that we must live with containers as a reality of commercial life then we must create and rigidly enforce laws that address the protection of our roadways, and the safety and convenience of citizens who can hardly be expected to endure conditions of misery and frustration as a price for living in their homes.

The problem, we concede, is a complex one that cannot be resolved at the drop of a hat. It is, at the same time, a problem of inconsiderate and decidedly insensitive people, on the one hand, and a regime of municipal and national law enforcement that is ponderous and, not in a few instances, insensitive, on the other.  And insofar as it appears that no effort is being made to even begin to apply incremental solutions to the problem – like, for example, enforcing  strict time limits for the public parking of containers. Imposing financial penalties for substantial damage to streets  and completely prohibiting  their access to vulnerable streets in residential areas – then the folly of simply allowing the situation to persist will remain testimony to the shortsightedness  of those responsible for bringing an end to what is a decidedly unacceptable situation.