Government must place more emphasis on maintenance of equipment

Dear Editor,

Guyana is not the only country that has to endure electrical storms time and again.
Everyone seems to accept that only the storm is to be blamed. Like most of us, we like to see and hear when improvements are being made in our country but we cannot get away from the fact that most of the time these improvements are being bogged down by bad management.

There are a lot of efforts being made, especially now for Carifesta, for tourists to visit Guyana. I would suggest that we redirect all of those efforts to improve some of our basic infrastructure, for example, telecommunication (networks that don’t work with each other); transportation (unmarked one-way streets, no road map available and traffic signals that don’t work), just to name a few. For me, the most important improvements need to be made to our only international airport.

Why invite tourists to Guyana and whenever it rains or there is fog planes can’t land and have to wait in another country until there is sunshine?

Why in 2008 does the Republic of Guyana not have proper ground and air traffic controls?

Why was all that sensitive equipment not better protected?

Its seems that whenever our country takes one  step forward it also takes two backwards and the media should dig deeper to identify a lot more faults that are just waiting to embarrass  our country.

Lastly, please get out of the attitude that you only fix it when it breaks or falls down. Maintenance is the key; equipment goes bad with time.

Maintain it or replace it before it becomes faulty or fails. A place as important as the airport should have two back-up generators which should be tested offline at least one hour per week in turn. Think about it.

Yours faithfully,
Ameer Allie