Slowly, imperceptibly, we have lost control of downtown Georgetown to the chaos and confusion that constitutes commercial life. The Georgetown City Council no longer even pretends that it has the capacity to maintain a sense of order in the city and no one else appears unduly worried about the unfolding tragedy.
Perhaps CARIFESTA X will witness a frenzied, last minute, temporary clean-up of sorts; and when the event has come and gone we will quietly return to the customary urban squalor.
For all its overbearing bluster the Georgetown City Council has failed to match the tenacity of the vendors or to respond effectively to the web of corruption –to which some of its officials now openly admit – that has kept so many vendors on the streets. The vendors themselves may argue that theirs is a well-intentioned response to high urban employment which is really no more offensive than the transgressions of those established businesses that customarily cordon off sections of pavement – some without City Hall approval – to facilitate renovation works or those who encumber the parapets with cumbersome cargo containers which have now become short-term storage space despite what the police say is a clear understanding that the containers should be emptied and moved with dispatch.
And while the chaos grows the various mouthpieces of the business community like the Private Sector Commission, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Guyana Manu-facturing and Services Association et al, remain silent about the loss of our city. They are not, it seems, in the least bit bothered about the hideous aura that surrounds our capital. The chaos, meanwhile, serves as a convenient theme for political outpourings about the state of the urban environment and the need to fix the damage. The next day – after the political pronouncements have served their questionable purpose – the drains remain choked with filth and food boxes, the pavements are still encumbered by vendors and barricades, business entrances remain blocked by forty-foot containers – and our merchants and our traders nestle comfortably in the squalor then the rains come again and the city is deluged. The whole overbearing cycle serves as fitting testimony to an urban civilization that has grown comfortable with squalor and a commercial culture that has long grown comfortable with the chaos.
Perhaps we should cease to point fingers at the municipality whose protracted ineptitude has been a function of the collective indifference of the citizenry. The real truth is that we do not care enough, we are not sufficiently outraged over the fact that Georgetown has become a city of unbridled chaos to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough and seek to take our capital back.
