The Stabroek News has already made it pellucid that one of the country’s most enduring food and beverage businesses that have afforded services to the people of Guyana and to visitors to the country, Banks DIH Ltd, have as a matter of both lawfulness and fairness, the right to occupy their various trading spaces without having to endure the physical encumbrances and other forms of hindrance and inconvenience that continues to obtain at the downtown Georgetown premises housing DEMICO House. This ought to be the case as a matter of right and there can be no question that the relevant authorities have a responsibility to support the company in pursuit of that right. Truth be told, it is to the credit of neither central government or the Georgetown municipality to play a game of ‘pass the buck’ over whose responsibility it is to ensure that the rights of one of the country’s most enduring food service businesses benefits from a prerogative to which it has every right.
When all of the facts of the matter are taken into consideration the question, in truth, arises, as to whether the removal of the nuisance that passes for vending on the pavement bordering the DEMICO business premises to the west is being taken seriously by either the police or the municipality. Indeed, one would have thought that in the instance of what is an (open and shut) egregious wrong that continues to be inflicted on Banks DIH Ltd, it is for the municipality and central government to act together in defense of what is Banks’ ‘open and shut’ right to have their premises cleared of the assorted encumbrances and obstructions which, manifestly, impede the company’s right to trade in a manner that provides it with the best opportunity for a standard of trading that maximize its returns whilst offering an acceptable level of service to its customers. This it cannot do in the present circumstances.
Interestingly, while, at least on the face of it, Banks DIH appears to have been patient and long-suffering whilst both the state and municipal authorities ‘play games’ over the situation, it has, it seems, become part of the essence of the problem. Here it is a matter of recognizing the rights of Banks DIH and (between the state authority and its municipal authority) do what is necessary to correct what is, in fact, an absurd and altogether unacceptable circumstance of lawlessness. The priority here (and we should make no mistake about it) is that the extant anomaly be corrected at the earliest possible time and that the municipal and state authorities act together to cause this to happen.
The other concern here has to do with doing what can be done to protect the livelihoods of the honest and genuine vendors who ply their trade in a space which they do not legally occupy. This, one feels, is a matter in which the municipal and state authorities ought to have been putting heads together long ago and here it has to be said that in some measure, the enduring nature of the problem has to do with the realities of the toxic political culture that continues to hang like a proverbial Sword of Damocles over our heads. At this juncture, and while we believe that the DEMICO ‘grouse’ is, quite simply, a matter of right and wrong, the issue of protecting the rights of Banks DIH Ltd whilst, simultaneously, earnestly seeking an optional pathway that addresses the right of vendors to ply their trade in legitimately allocated spaces must remain firmly on the table. It is only a lack of will and an official indifference to the rights, responsibilities and entitlements of the parties concerned to resolve this matter that causes it to persist up to this time.
