The government has allowed a discomfiting hiatus to develop between the announcement by Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh in his budget speech last March that government was allocating one billion Guyana dollars to a coastal cleanup exercise and the actualization of the exercise. Granted, it takes time to plan such an elaborate undertaking, but one would have thought that by now an all-encompassing plan would have been forthcoming. What is also desirable is that the exercise be wrapped up within the financial year.
Not a few observers appeared to be of the view that central government’s big-spending gesture may have been its latest excursion into political one-upmanship in its ongoing confrontation with an impoverished urban municipality, in view of the fact that half the money was to be allocated to Georgetown.
The urban cleanup announcement was a curious if by no means unwelcome gesture from the government, except that the hiatus which followed the Finance Minister’s announcement had made it seem as though there was an expectation that you could get the job done by simply throwing money at the problem.
Cabinet has now deliberated on the matter on more than one occasion and while we must assume that those deliberations have taken the planning process forward we are still none the wiser as to the details of whatever plan has been devised to get the job done. Accordingly, it would by no means be unfair to say that it is high time that we get the show on the road.
The exercise has come at a time when the urban garbage crisis grows worse. We are just about coming to the end of that period of protracted school holidays and what, these days, are the impressive levels of liquidity among schoolchildren which have spiked fast food sales significantly. Some of the evidence of this is apparent in the daily condition of the drains and parapets. We hasten to add, incidentally, that grown-ups too are part of the problem.
June, incidentally, was to have been the cut-off point for the importation of the polystyrene food and beverage containers that have become the bane of our environmental existence. Those containers, according to unofficial estimates, account for somewhere between two and three per cent of urban solid waste. The time-frame for importing these non-biodegradable containers has been extended.
There had long been a less than discreet lobby from a section of the business community (how large a section is difficult to determine) for the containers to stay. It appears too, that despite the biodegradable products being offered by the local company Caribbean Container Inc, the available evidence would seem to suggest that we will be dealing with polystyrene containers for some while yet.
What we perhaps most need to see at this stage is a comprehensive plan of action for the clean-up. Issues like logistics, management, manpower allocation and machine and equipment allocation ought, of necessity, to be part of the plan. Then there is the attendant public awareness programme designed to secure citizen cooperation to ensure that what is done is not undone quickly. Truth be told, the best that can be said for us coastal dwellers is that we have cultivated a remarkable tolerance for our deplorable environment. Indeed, persuading people on the whole to become stakeholders in ensuring that once the job is done we do not immediately return whence we came could prove as tough a job as the clean-up exercise itself.
The exercise is intended to contain a generous measure of self-help work with logistical support from the body responsible for coordinating the project. This is presumably on the theory that people who become directly involved in community-based restoration and beautification projects are more likely to embrace a stake in the retention of high standards. In ideal circumstances, another good thing that could come out of this exercise is that lands and canals cleared of refuse could become community playing fields, meeting places and facilities for recreation. Accordingly, if properly managed there would be numerous advantages to be derived from causing the communities to belong to the project.
However, while the theory is good, mobilizing the communities requires planning and sustained effort, and where this is concerned one doubts that the Ministry of Local Government has the manpower, the know-how or the will to mobilise volunteers on the ground on any scale. Where the arrangement might work is when there are already cleanup groups in existence generated from below within a community, and not assembled from above by government, or created in response to government. Representatives of such groups could then co-ordinate with the authorities, with the former in charge of the cleanup, not the latter.
Doubts notwithstanding, citizens still hope that the campaign will be a success. There are many positives which can derive from cleaning up coastal Guyana and significantly changing the face of the capital in the process. For a start we would have been clearing another hurdle towards the goal of increased visitor arrivals. There is also that feel-good sensation that can come with a healthier environment which can change our social outlook and perhaps even our sense of country.
