Dear Editor,
Your article ‘When it rains, it pours for city businesses’ (SN, Aug.16th) with the accompanying photographs, graphically paint a picture of a failed state. The city of Georgetown was once practically a pristine place.
The drainage system which is indispensable for human habitation on a land mass which is below sea level, worked. Town planning existed and things worked. It resulted in an orderly and clean environment. Today, almost half a century after political Independence it is all chaos and disorder. We are surrounded by and exist amid filth and squalor, even, particularly perhaps, in the Capital. I do not believe that a single gutter in the city, functions as it should or was designed to.
It results in Georgetown being an
indescribably filthy place. One does
not see it if moving around in a vehicle; on foot, however, one comes face to face with horror.
High rise buildings are going up all across the city but we are sinking in stench and filth. According to your article, the city`s commercial hub is ‘overwhelmed’ after ‘ten minutes of rainfall’! The pictures show a shantytown. This is Georgetown in the year 2014.
Editor I moved to Georgetown in 1966 from the Corentyne and lived in the lower end of Smyth St. My brothers and I played bumper ball cricket and would regularly have to retrieve the ball from the gutter. We would even hide under the bridge playing hide-and-seek! Today the gutters in the city are accidents waiting to happen. An epidemic will surely visit the city if the policymakers do not acknowledge that we have passed a crisis point and act with urgency. The answer of course is not more finger pointing.
Yours faithfully,Ronald Bulkan
