Dear Editor,
The Guyana Government has at least two ministries and one agency that should have an interest in the physical environment of the City of Georgetown and the quality of life of its citizens. Those ministries are Health and Tourism Industry and Commerce. The agency that falls under the portfolio of the Office of the President is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
It is scandalous that these three institutions should stand aloof and apparently twiddle their thumbs whilst Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana descends into a state of wretchedness and squalor. The city administration has already exhibited its incompetence in managing the basic services it should be providing, so who or which one or more of these institutions is to halt the downward drift? Don’t the Ministers, senior administrators, Mayor and councillors walk around and observe the level of pollution that is engulfing the city? Is it an issue of nonchalance, impotence or lack of care for the citizens?
Walk almost anywhere around the inner city, but more particularly in Wortmanville, and the putrid nature of the air is virtually suffocating. Take a stroll along D’Urban Street and the effluent flows into the drain and into yards where people have to navigate precariously to get to their doors lest they stumble into the mire. I ask again, how long one must endure this depressing and intolerable condition?
I do not have at my disposal the list of responsibilities that devolve on these ministries and agency but I am sure that each has a role to play in ensuring that some minimum standard of environmental cleanliness exists. Which environment is the EPA protecting? Which area of Georgetown can be termed a tourist attraction? Which agency is enforcing the public health requirements for a healthy environment?
Come on citizens, awake from your slumber, if that is the state of anomie in which you find yourself. These conditions need to be arrested. And, as Frederick Douglass once articulated, “to remain silent when we should protest makes cowards of men.” Is the condition of the city something about which we can be proud?
To you the representatives of the above institutions are you waiting for a calamitous situation to develop before you act? Get about doing the job for which you are paid and clean up the city.
Yours faithfully,
Hubert C Roberts
