When Fire Chief Marlon Gentle raised the spectre of dilapidated buildings once again this month, City Hall, under which the responsibility falls, issued the usual pat answer through Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba that the matter would be discussed at a meeting and then action would be taken. The record would show that at least three times before Ms Sooba took up her current position, promises were made that action would be taken with respect to derelict buildings in the city.
Not only are these buildings eyesores, owing to the fact that some of them have been vandalised, but because the majority are wooden and rotten, the real and present danger is that they could fall at any time and may injure passersby or anyone in the vicinity. In addition, several have attracted squatters who range from persons with mental issues, to drug addicts to bandits, who lie in wait to rob passersby. The danger of any one of these buildings going up in flames and posing a threat to nearby houses is imminent given that their unauthorised occupants would steal electricity and light fires to cook food or to use their drugs.
The identification of derelict buildings for demolition goes back decades. The fact that Mayor Hamilton Green has been in his post for almost two decades—18 years in fact—reveals that he is/has been cognisant of the danger posed by the buildings. Yet, when contacted by a reporter from this newspaper recently, Mayor Green offered the pernicious gobbledygook about the city facing several challenges in carrying out the demolition exercises. Calling the process “ongoing”, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of it never having taken off, Mr Green said that one of the difficulties was finding the owners of the derelict properties. He was, of course, being disingenuous.
A case in point is the old Bedford school building at Robb and Bourda streets, which formerly belonged to the Methodist Church in Guyana, but was ‘taken over’ by the Burnham administration along with all of the other church schools decades ago. Booming commerce in the vicinity of the market made the building unsuitable for use as a learning facility and once unoccupied it fell into disrepair. Numerous calls have been made over the years to ministers of education, beginning with the late Dale Bisnauth and to Henry Jeffrey and Shaik Baksh, by the relevant Methodist authority for the return of the property, to no avail. So the Mayor and City Council knows exactly whose door to knock on with regard to this.
The Kitty Market, which was also identified by the Guyana Fire Service as one of the 38 derelict and hazardous buildings in Georgetown, belongs to the city.
Meanwhile, Mayor Green also said that City Hall would take a “humanitarian perspective” and not break down the structures when they are occupied. Instead, the mayor ought to be considering the risk to life and limb of the occupants were these structures to collapse or catch fire, and the inhuman conditions under which the occupants must be existing.
Public Relations Officer at City Hall Royston King was also being more than a little mealy-mouthed when he referred to the cost of demolishing the buildings as a concern, and that the city would have to stand such cost if the owners were not found. It is more than likely that many of the owners of derelict buildings have died or migrated or both. Surely there are no rates and taxes being paid on these rotted structures. What was/is preventing the city from auctioning these buildings for want of taxes with the precondition that the new owner take responsibility for speedy demolition?
Georgetown is not the only city with derelict buildings; some of the major cities in the world have them, and they can offer a sort of old-world charm once they are sound, that is. There is nothing charming about a rotten old building on the verge of falling down.
In August 2011, Mr King, speaking on behalf of the M&CC, had said that demolition of derelict buildings was to start in weeks. “We are moving to take them down because the core of our mandate of the council is to ensure the integrity of the city, provided that it should be a clean, safe and healthy city. Therefore, we need to remove those things that pose a threat to the safety and health of citizens,” he had stated. Nearly two years have passed and the threats to the safety of the city remain. We will, of course, expect the usual excuses from City Hall when any of the 38 impending disasters occurs.
