Dear Editor,
I absorb the steady trickle of letters in SN and KN where citizens complain about chronic noise pollution. Based on what has made the papers, and what is heard offline, Guyanese are dealing with more than noise pollution. They are forced to live however they can with a continuous noise plague of the worst sort. It is sickening them, it interferes with their quality of life, and it violates their right to a peaceful existence, and disturbs their law-abiding environment. Where is the PPP Government on this, what its leaders know is a serious problem, almost a national disease, like corruption?
When that issue came up recently, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo delivered an overhead smash that splattered noise pollution all over the place in Guyana. He spoke about culture and nightlife, with Guyanese warming up after 10 o’clock (p.m.) to get their blood flowing. What he left out was all the other lawless business that was also going down under the cover of dark and thunderous volume. Without any inclination towards embarrassing the Vice President, I am forced to remind him of the reciprocal high regard that exists between the PPP Government and the business community. It is so insidious as to be treacherous. The regrettable outcome is the Guyanese family stretched across urban and rural population centers is the one living in what has become torture chambers, while making them virtual prisoners in their own homes and communities.
One glaring example is Region Three, the birthplace and occasional weekend resting place of Guyana’s head-of-state. If the noise pollution plague can be at such brazen and damaging levels in his own youthful playgrounds, and he is still a picture of seeming indifference and casual distance, then this does not say much about the state of his mind. It does say something, though, about the stranglehold that the business community, a certain powerful and dark subsection of it, has on the PPP Government and its leaders. In some respects, I think that the government and leaders, like Ali and Jagdeo, are afraid to read that now all but useless riot act against noise pollution plague offenders.
One word is all that is required from the president. In fact, a word would be too much. All he must do is shake his head ever so slightly from side to side, and his discomfort would hit home to all parties, including the blind and those pretending to be stone deaf. If the president is hesitant to compress his lips into a tight line around the hoods of all those neighbours and friends and some family to register his disapproval, then what is he concerned about, what does he have the courage to do? What is holding him back? How much money could businesspeople and other noise pollution plague carriers be giving to the PPP Government? Or what kind of business do the businesspeople assist in making possible for the government and its movers and shakers?
I think that this explains why Jagdeo performed his own graceless dance when the noise pollution issue was drawn to his attention. Jagdeo is not a man to let a business relationship go to waste; the possibilities are too rich and too open-ended. He knows his role and does what must be done. When verbal interference is called for, the chief policy creator understands what he must do to shift Guyanese focus from the noise monster to the culture and history and demands of the new environment.
Conveniently overlooked by the vice president is that those being battered by noise nuisance are now seeing red. Noise nuisance qualifies as the weakest of understatements, since the volumes from bars and grog shops and makeshift streetside entertainment hustles are at such mind-bending levels. In Kitty, close to the Georgetown Seawall, some residents have been trying for five years or more to have the noise brought under control. Police commanders have been written to, the subject ministers have been communicated to, calls and reports have been made to the appropriate desks, but all to no avail. The question I ask is if the noise nuisance cum pollution cum plague is so bad as to be bigger than the government? Or, more fittingly, are the people behind the noise explosions so powerful that they are a law unto themselves?
One would think that a concerted effort by Presidents Ali and Jagdeo is all that it takes to wipe this noise issue off the Guyana map. Nobody could tell me that the noise menace is something the PPP Government fears to disrupt because of the potential fallout between business and politics. Or, as said before, due to the disruptions of commerce that are usually conducted in the dark. My concern is that if the PPP Government and leaders shrink from confronting an issue as routine and low hanging as noise torture, then what can they govern. The PPP is equipped to deal with this abomination once and all, so its foot-dragging and vacillating don’t add up.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
