Dear Editor,
The situation on Church Street, Georgetown should be engaging the attention of the Attorney General, the Minister of Health, and the Prime Minister as Chairperson of the COVID-19 Task Force.
The Attorney General should be exploring why a cash-strapped City Council, often without the resources to deliver basic services to citizens, or to pay its staff on time, would lease 27,000 square feet of prime real estate in central Georgetown for G$108,000 per month, the equivalent of G$4.01 per sq.ft. Yes…four dollars and one cent. No…not United States dollars, Guyanese dollars. Surely this can’t be market value. Was this advertised to tender, offered to others?
Your paper suggested in a recent article that the lessee expects to accommodate up to 300 cars there. Assuming only 200 of these parking spots are filled (conservative) for 5 hours a day (very conservative), on 20 days of the month (very, very conservative), and each patron paid G$500 per hour, the M&CC could be earning G$10M per month in parking fees. Every month. The argument that the lease is intended to ease traffic is superficially logical, but doesn’t hold water. Following that line of thought, M&CC should next move to convert the Main Street & Camp Street avenues to parking. Patrons to GRA can expect some relief. Courts as well.
But as importantly, it’s time for the Minister of Health, and the Covid-19 Task Force to walk their own talk. For more than a year, many of Guyana’s children have been kept out of school at the insistence of the Task Force. Those in the hinterlands have been effectively left to their own devices (no pun intended). Our youngest and most vulnerable have sacrificed to keep the nation healthy. Yet every day, and every night, hundreds of people gather without masks to gamble uninhibited. To sport and frolic through the night. Is this fair? Is this Guyana’s future? As Guyanese we should be ashamed. And if this is the new Guyana, then the new is just as rotten as the old.
Sincerely,
(Name and address provided)