Dear Editor,
I wish to react to a letter titled, ‘All common lodging houses are required to register under the Municipal and District Councils Act’ that was published in the Saturday, April 10 edition of Stabroek News.
While I do support City Hall in enforcing the law, it should not be done selectively, so that the Georgetown city councillors and officers should ensure that the city administration is a model for all to emulate. In this context, I have the following questions for the Georgetown Mayor, city councillors, City Engineer, Clerk of Markets and the Food Safety Department of the municipality through its Public Relations Officer Royston King:
a) Why are open-air ‘barber shops’ and beauty parlours allowed to thrive around the Stabroek Market/America Street/Demico area. People cut hair for a living in the open just a pebble’s throw from an eating house – KFC near Stabroek Market?
b) Why are food vendors being allowed to mushroom overnight on the streets of Georgetown? These people operate with impunity with no Food Handlers Certificate, but accompanied by stray dogs (another function of City Hall to get rid of). The nearby drains and roadways are constantly littered and clogged with food and styrofoam boxes from the very food-vending businesses.
c) Why is Georgetown entering yet another garbage-collection crisis, even as the city has been burning more than 1,000 bulbs (betwween 40 and 60 watts) on the façade of Stabroek Market each night for several months now?
d) Why is City Hall is not repairing Stabroek Market’s wharf, a section of whose rotten roof is dangling to the point of falling because the rotten post has also disappeared? This poses serious risk to life and limb to the people who sell and dwell in that area.
e) Has City Hall granted approval for the old New Thriving Restaurant at the corner of Camp Street and Brickdam to be used as a dwelling/hotel by Chinese nationals?
f) Why is the City Hall building being left to rot to a state of dilapidation and the wiring there appears to be a fire hazard?
g) Is Kitty Market is in a habitable condition and should it not be condemned?
If City Hall is delinquent in enforcing all the laws in relation to itself regarding the above, then it has no moral authority to insist on enforcement when private citizens are involved. Fairness, balance and equity are woefully absent!
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
