Dear Editor,
St George’s Cathedral in Georgetown is in need of urgent repairs. I pass near that building every day and I was able to walk around it a number of times. From my observation the walls of this magnificent cathedral are falling apart. The gutters are rotten and broken down, the yard is extremely dirty and vagrants and prostitutes sleep in the compound at night. I passed early one morning and saw lots of vagrants sleeping on the building’s steps and the platform; they eat, sleep and urinate there, yet neither priest nor bishop puts an eye to the deplorable state of the building and the environment. For a place of worship this cathedral is extremely dirty and it seems as if the church board and our current administration don’t care if it falls down tomorrow. All the paint peeling off the walls tells me that the cathedral has not been cleaned or painted in years. I saw scaffolding around it, but no painting or repairs being done.
It can fall to the ground any time, because the yard is like a semi-lake when it rains. The water doesn’t run off, it lodges in the yard around the building thus undermining its foundation.
The yard of this building needs filling, as well as an urgent solid casting with steel in it to hold the foundation firmly; it should also have proper drainage. A very high fence needs to be erected around the building so vagrants won’t sleep there, and there should be proper security.
This building is a landmark in Guyana and we treat it very badly. One of the problems in this country is that we wait until something is completely destroyed, then we try to rebuild it when it could have cost less if it was properly maintained.
This building needs general repairs, as well as being painted in different attractive colours, and should have a gated yard with some nice, sweet-smelling flowers in the compound, because cleanliness is next to Godliness. I guess the administrators of this building will ask the government to assist financially in repairing this building. I am calling on the relevant authorities to repair St George’s Cathedral urgently. The Anglican Church is a very huge organization and it’s about time it was repaired.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil
