Businesses are operating in Queenstown in defiance of the by-laws

Dear Editor,

Mr Royston King, the City Council’s Public Relations Officer must be congratulated on his vision for reinventing the Garden City of Georgetown (‘We need to reinvent the city of Georgetown’  SN, November 26).

Mr King’s only omission from his well-reasoned letter is his failure to refer to the decimation which is taking place in the ‘residential’ district of Queenstown, which is still defined in the Georgetown building by-laws as a residential district.

A few examples of the decimation that is taking place are:

1.  Oversized lorries (bush lorries) are allowed to park on and destroy the city council’s parapet for months with only brief intervals of a couple of days.
2.  Building permits are granted willy nilly in clear violation of the laws of Guyana for the construction and renovation of buildings for carrying on business, that the Georgetown building by-laws prohibit.
The Georgetown by-laws prohibit any building which is to be used for any manufacturing, trade or business purpose from being erected or built on any lot east of Oronoque Street, and no such building shall be used for any such purpose as aforesaid.
3.  Along Peter Rose Street from Church Street to Lamaha Street east of Oronoque Street there are businesses operating between Church and Forshaw; further south between Crown Street and Laluni Street, there is a used car business, a bakery and a security agency. At Laluni and Peter Rose Streets, now in the course of construction, there is a radio station which, as radio stations go, would have a broadcasting tower of over 500 feet. Again in Laluni Street between Peter Rose and New Garden Street a company carries on a shipping business where containers are regularly stored encumbering the street.

I would like to ask Mr King whether those businesses operating in Queenstown east of Oronoque Street are licensed to do so, and if they are, is the city council involved in licensing them in violation of the building by-laws?

What is amazing is the insouciance of the residents and property owners of Queenstown to protest this obvious decimation of their ward.

Yours faithfully,
Romeo Ramdehol