Dear Editor,
Our city is fast becoming a ‘boom’ town – not like the old west of the United States when they struck oil. We are still exploring. But mining is making its impact.
But the ‘boom’ with which we are becoming increasingly familiar is one that precedes the crackling flames of fire – attributed to otherwise nutritional ‘channa’ – which reportedly explodes on ingestion.
The most recent incident is remarked by its consumption as an act of ‘suicide’ by an as yet unidentified ‘junkie,’ peremptorily ‘certified’ however as a ‘courier’ of illegal arms – the stuff of which ‘reality’ stories are made. As it turned out the ‘boom’ was a boon to keen monitors who all along ‘knew’ of these nefarious Stabroek activities but withheld the information from the police.
The result of this explosive incident is that near victims who were openly vending their wares acquired from more immunised local suppliers, have been discovered to be almost vagrant, insanitary impediments, and security irritants. So dozens of these ‘denizens’ have been blasted out of their stalls, and in the process disrobed of their living – that is until appropriate arrangements have been completed for their sanitised relocation.
But the myopic focus on these irritant vendors, has excluded interest in the wider potential danger which could have been posed – that of a crackling inferno. It is possibly the second incident in two years when Stabroek Square could have been more substantially threatened. The other was the conflagration which overtook business places in the area of Hadfield and Lombard Streets – too close to Parliament Building for comfort.
The third time Stabroek Square, with the hundreds of gallons of flammable liquid parked in such close proximity, may, one day or night, produce a situation that may be compounded by the inability of the Central Fire Station to release itself from its caged location.
Fortunately at this moment of assuaged anxiety the only legitimate concern can be the much degraded public health status of the area. In addition to the stench of nearby garbage which must assault firemen resident in a building seemingly derelict, there is the unattractive sight of a mixture of material and living waste directly across from the entrance to, of all places, the Ministry of Human Services. Those persons, however, would appear to earn the benefit of doubt, as they lie in wait, protecting the abandoned site where the Guyana National Cooperative Bank was once headquartered.
The fact is that the whole Stabroek scenario should bend the Minister of Tourism to reflect on how hostile an image it projects of the city to prospective tourists. This is as good a time as any for the Minister to engage the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and related private sector organisations to review and revise the physical prospects of Georgetown in the second decade of the 21st century. What a legacy they would have left to history if, for example, the parties collaborated in the design of the visionarily architectured mall on the aforesaid abandoned site, the several storeys of which could accommodate better and more disciplined groups of small business persons, financially powered by IPED and other banking institutions.
What a dream – a clean Stabroek Square, devoid of the smell of garbage and gasoline of vehicles – by then also relocated, along with the Central Fire Station!
Yours faithfully,
E B John
