Earlier this month, this newspaper published a photograph of a man shoulder-deep in a muddy drain along Mandela Avenue. He was trying to find the broken end of a pipeline so it could be repaired. Incongruously, perhaps, he wore a hard hat on his head, when what he really ought to have been wearing—given the task he was performing—was a wet suit. When the state of the city drains is considered, the worker’s almost complete immersion in that murky water could most definitely pose both short and long-term dangers to his health.
In addition, from the angle the photograph was taken there could have been yet another danger to him from the machinery digging silt from the same area where he was working. Scenarios included the machine’s bucket striking the worker—as he was below it in the trench—as well as the machine sliding off the muddy bank of the drain and crushing the worker. That neither happened was a stroke of good fortune.
It was not known if the man in the photo was employed by the Guyana Water Inc, or by one of its contractors and whether he is covered by health or life insurance as well as under the National Insurance Scheme. Or what sort of redress, if any, he would have if he