With Cricket World Cup 2007 now just two months away the financial crisis gripping the Georgetown City Council continues to cast a huge pall of uncertainty over the likely success of what is clearly a “last ditch” effort to at least render the capital presentable for the Guyana leg of the world’s largest international cricket tournament.
Rufus Lewis, a former Director of Waste Manage-ment at the Georgetown City Council who was contracted last July to coordinate the pre-World Cup urban cleanup is aware that the prying eyes of the international media will not be confined to events at the US$25m cricket stadium at Providence and he is not hiding his concern.
The city enhancement project, he says, is cash – strapped. In 2006 the Georgetown City Council had budgeted $1.052 billion for the environmental enhancement of the city. The pre-World Cup exercise seeks to establish the same goals with a budget of around $200m. “The simple fact,” Lewis says, “is that we are short of funds to complete all the tasks that we have set ourselves.”
What could see the project through, Lewis told Stabroek Business, is the sense of urgency and the preparedness to work together that is being demonstrated by the City Council, government and the private sector – the principal partners in the exercise. He bemoans the fact that the present belated sense of concern for the appearance of the city did not materialize earlier but says that this is not the time to dwell on” that point.
Under the pre-World Cup environmental enhancement exercise the municipality, government and the private sector have undertaken separate responsibilities and Lewis is charged with “pulling together” those separate efforts into a single project. Government, for the most part, is throwing equipment and personnel into the restoration of roads most likely to be used during the World Cup period and the levelling and beautification of parapets. Lewis says that while he is aware that some central government funding is also being invested in the exercise he is uncertain about the extent of that funding.
The City Council is focusing on the de-silting of canals, garbage disposal and rendering Georgetown’s most popular spots – like the Stabroek market – more presentable. For its part, the private sector is spearheading an initiative titled the Downtown Georgetown Enhancement Project under which it has undertaken to enhance and beautify a strip of the commercial centre bordered by Church street, Croal street, Avenue of the Republic and the Demerara River. For all the energy that is being poured into the project Lewis is only cautiously optimistic. He avoids questions about deadlines and targets and wanted to go on record as saying that while the exercise was “covering ground,” as far as completion over the next two months is concerned “we are cutting it fine.”
With little evidence up to this time that the project is “on top” of the critical urban garbage disposal problem Lewis concedes that this is one of his biggest challenges. He says that shortly 150 garbage bins – including 60 donated by GT&T – will be dispersed around the city but admits that this is only a partial solution. “Much of the problem of garbage stems from a culture of irresponsible dumping.
The fact is that the garbage collection rate cannot keep pace with the rate at which garbage is being dumped and bins alone will not solve the problem.”
Two initiatives are likely to unfold to help address the dumping problem. First, Lewis is hoping that businessmen in the commercial belt will “sign on” to a commitment to enhance their immediate “operating space” and that that commitment will include responsible garbage disposal. Secondly, the Council has allocated $5m to an anti-dumping public awareness programme that will “kick in” in the weeks leading to the start of Cricket World Cup.
Tackling the city’s long-standing “eyesores” like the congested Stabroek Market area and the decrepit Toolsie Persaud Arcade are also part of Lewis’s pre-World Cup mandate and stallholders offering caps, leather goods and other items in an area equidistant from the Stabroek market and Demico House have already responded to the Council’s directive that they erect collapsible stalls. As for the assortment of “cool down carts,” Sno Cone vendors and itinerant hagglers that populate the area Lewis says that the municipality will simply be moving to enforce the laws governing street vending. According to Lewis more than 95 per cent of the street vendors are operating without Council permission anyway.
In the limited time left before the start of Cricket World Cup there appears to be no plans to decisively address the eyesore of the Toolsie Persaud Mall. Instead, Lewis says, the Downtown George-town Environmental Enhan-cement Project will simply erect a fa?e around the facility to conceal its offensive interior from prying eyes.
Lewis says he is under no illusions that the pre-World Cup enhancement effort will bring about a transformed city. Years of neglect, he says, cannot be remedied through the kind of “hurried effort” that has now become necessary to meet the World Cup target. “While we are hoping to make the city presentable for the period the worst thing that could happen is for us to return to our old ways once the event is over.” It is “the event,” however, and the millions of prying eyes that will peruse the country’s capital during Cricket World Cup, however, that are Lewis’s current preoccupation.
