Dear Editor,
So we have learnt from the media that the government will be conducting another fogging exercise in Georgetown.
Based on the available evidence, this is another feature of the disaster which the President of the Republic of Guyana, Donald Ramotar describes with reference to Georgetown. Here you have a municipality responsible for public health in Georgetown and there has been no consultation with the duly elected Mayor and Councillors of Georgetown.
Second, we have not been told what chemical (or chemicals) is being used, and whether it is being imported from a credible source by a credible importer. In addition, we do not know whether the chemical will be effective against this chikungunya virus, and if so, if it will be harmful to babies and small children.
What a caring government might have done was, after the Parliament passed the Bill for the Restoration of Georgetown, in collaboration with the municipality, begin the process to secure the integrity of the drainage system in Georgetown. This would rid the city of vermin, rodents and flying insects and the camoudies that residents killed in Princes Street last Sunday.
After the passage in Parliament of the Bill, I told Minister Whittaker that we could proceed immediately with the drainage system. I reminded him that apart from my experience as a former Minister of Works, there were still available retired engineers to give guidance on such a project.
When I asked the Minister what funds were available to give meaning to the Bill passed in Parliament, he could not say. The Minister of Finance gave a similar response.
Related to the question of vermin, rodents and flying insects, is of course the question of garbage and public education. The IDB Project was intended to address these vital areas. For reasons which only the government can explain, we never got the public education programme properly executed, while how those millions were utilized, is another matter.
It appears that the government’s obsession to control every facet of our lives and ignore the vital components of local government or ‘shared governance’ is driving the PPP to cause disaster in the city.
Notice they have started the Pick-it-Up Campaign and have gone ahead appointing litter wardens (originally the idea of the Mayor).
At a meeting, I tried to persuade Minister Robert Persaud that the message of Pick-it-Up was inappropriate, and that the message should have been ‘Do-Not-Drop’; he did not seem to appreciate this not so subtle difference.
Yours faithfully,
Hamilton Green, JP
