In the 2014 national budget read in Parliament towards the end of March last year, the government allocated $1 billion towards a campaign called ‘Clean-up my Country’. Under this campaign, half of the money allocated—$500 million—was to be spent in the city, while the rest was to be given to the various regional bodies for similar work in the regions.
As the campaign got underway, there were frequent updates by way of press releases and photographs of the areas being cleaned, especially Le Repentir Cemetery, which had been in a deplorable state for years. Sections of the cemetery had been tackled over the years with little or no lasting effect. Like the rest of the city, the rot in the cemetery (no pun intended) had set in deep and the cosmetic fixes being applied could not bring about much change.
In 2012, the Ministry of Public Works had set about handing out a number of contracts to private individuals to weed Le Repentir; prison inmates were also roped in and citizens passing by could see the two groups at it. For a few weeks, Le Repentir began to look halfway decent again and then the work stopped. It all went downhill quickly after that. The vegetation grew back with a vengeance as everything observers had been warning against came to pass. One simple observation was that it was foolish to just slash the tops off weeds and trees as these would grow back; what was needed was for the roots to be removed. This was ignored and soon after there was no sign that some $32 million had been spent in the cemetery—money, labour, time wasted.
The same principle should, of course, be applied in the approach to cleaning up the city. But sadly, those in authority never listen to advice and have little patience with constructive criticism.
Then too the government would like to have citizens believe that the garbage strewn around the city and in its canals is the only issue. It is in fact just part of the problem. The much bigger issue is that major canals have not been desilted for umpteen years. Because they are blocked, the water in the minor canals, trenches and drains have nowhere to run off. Surely it occurs to someone in authority that although some canals are clean, they are so filled to the top with water that the minute there is any significant rainfall, there will be flooding. The garbage only serves to the make the mix nastier and more unsafe.
Without the benefit of any training in rocket science or engineering, one can gather that the swollen canals would have contributed to November’s intense flooding after heavy overnight rainfall, which in some areas was reported to be higher than what had obtained in the 2005 Great Flood. Also, because there was no forewarning of the torrential rainfall, despite there being mechanisms in place for this, many residents and businesses suffered severe damage to property yet again.
And even with the many more pumps that have been added to the system since 2005, the water still took between 2 to 3 days or longer in some sections to be drained off the land. Did the government have a Eureka moment? No. Instead, the PPP’s mouthpiece, General Secretary Clement Rohee took to thumping his chest as he proclaimed, “We wish to conclude that the impact could have been worse, had it not been for the ‘Clean-up My Country’ campaign, which, in our view, played a major role in draining parts of Guyana.” He regurgitated that there was need to examine the drainage capacity, then berated city residents, who were accused of filling in drains to create parking or extend their property and City Hall for its lack of proper stewardship. Then, as if to confound us all came a jaw-dropping feature from the Government Information Agency (GINA) titled, ‘Garbage – the other side of development’ which was distributed to all media houses on Saturday last. According to the writer, many persons apparently do not realise that “increased garbage is a definite result of this increased socio-economic development…” There is a positive in “putrid and smelly garbage,” the writer contends, “It is the signpost of, and price for, prosperity. And our own Guyana is a perfect example of this very interesting, but unorthodox contention.” No one could be blamed for concluding then that GINA must be a leader in this arena. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that in other places in the world where development brought with it an increase in refuse, authorities moved quickly to increase the capacity to deal with such.
To date, there has been no proper accounting for how the $1 billion clean-up funds were spent. The forum for such questioning—the Parliament—remains suspended. One would hope though that it remains fairly high on the agenda to be addressed once the current ridiculous situation ends.
