Whenever it rains with any meaningful level of intensity, the city floods. That is no secret. Nor are the implications of the flooding for normal life, including the safety and the health of those of us who must function in flooded conditions; though this is of particular concern.
Business usually takes a battering. Trading in flooded, vermin-infested business premises is both unpleasant and dangerous. And when a point is reached where the doors of businesses must close because the flooding situation has simply become untenable, loss of trading is calculated in millions of dollars.
Even in the most favourable weather conditions municipal markets can be vermin-infested places. When the rains come the waters become infested with rotting food and the resident vermin. The trading environment becomes downright dangerous, sometimes reaching a point where some vendors must stop trading altogether. Issues of both spoilage – in cases of perishables – and loss of income arise.
On the whole, our approach to tackling what has been a protracted and serious problem has been underpinned by remarkable folly. The approach has been to simply ride out one serious downpour (and the attendant consequences) after another without applying ourselves to making what would be a worthwhile investment in the infrastructure. Perhaps this could include elevated concrete stalls and improved drainage – that would better position the vendors to ply their trade safely, even in bad weather. Flood abatement measures, whatever those may mean in engineering terms would also have the effect of encouraging consumers to shop even in bad weather and would significantly reduce, if not remove altogether the problem of lost earnings.
Here, the point should be made that whatever the national plans for local government elections, we need to begin to seriously question the wisdom of leaving weighty responsibilities like the trading conditions in our municipal markets to a Georgetown City Council that is acutely at odds with itself and cannot offer anywhere near the level of attention that our markets need.
What is of comparable interest is the sustained silence of the business support organisations; their infrequently voiced support for the very small businesses that suffer under the conditions that obtain in the municipal markets when the rains come. In circumstances where – for whatever reason – traders in municipal markets appear to have very little voice when it comes to the conditions under which they trade, it is for organizations like the Private Sector Commission, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Associa-tion (GMSA) to seek to make effective representation for those numerous small businesses that trade in our municipal markets, making a significantly cumulative contribution to economic growth.
