Shining Georgetown

And so begins the long overdue cleaning of the city, which has been ignored for years and has been left to become a rotten disgrace. As this newspaper reported last week, contracts have been signed for the desilting of internal drains in Le Repentir Cemetery as well as several major canals around the city, which are also to be weeded. Some $64 million of the $500 million earmarked by the government in this year’s national budget to clean up Georgetown will be spent on those two projects as well as the procurement of laboratory equipment which is intended to monitor the air and water quality at landfills across Region Four; Haags Bosch, Lusignan and the closed Le Repentir dumpsites were mentioned specifically.

Provided these contracts begin soon and are worked on with alacrity they stand the chance of being completed during the current dry spell. This would be the first time in possibly over a decade that this has been done. City residents have had a surfeit, over the years, of the sloppy goopy mess that passes for desilting of canals in the rainy season, which was nothing but a waste of taxpayers’ money and really did nothing much to assist with drainage.

However, as far as cleaning the city goes, the above-mentioned contracts will barely scrape the surface. Minor drains and alleyways will have to be cleared as well and parapets weeded and levelled. If all goes well, the beleaguered residents of South Cummingsburg areas like Quamina Street; sections of Albouystown; most of South and North Ruimveldt and others who live in the city’s known ‘ponds’ might finally get some relief.

The hundreds of illegal mini-dumpsites that dot the city will have to be cleared away and measures put in place to ensure that they do not reappear. The latter, of course, being the more difficult task. The fact is that the indiscriminate dumping of garbage has become endemic in Georgetown. The drive-by littering carried out by the drivers and passengers of vehicles, which result in disposable cups, boxes and plastic bags, among other items, being strewn about the city’s streets on a daily basis is just a part of the bigger problem.

That bigger problem manifests in the scores of householders who might wait a few days for garbage trucks to remove their waste before lobbing it off in the bushes around the corner (out of sight, out of mind), or paying a dubious waste remover who will promise otherwise, but do exactly the same thing.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, it manifests too in those unscrupulous businessmen and women, who, ever with an eye to their bottom line, will pay vagrants, odd-job men and the like a hundred dollars or so to dispose of their waste. They could, of course, pay legitimate private contractors—several businesses do employ this service—but it would cost a few thousand and they obviously prefer not to spend money on garbage removal. The waste given to the flunky to remove goes no further than a block or two away. The business owner who employs these people has to be aware of that fact, but clearly does not care.

Years ago it had been proposed in this column that all the city needed to do to catch the illegal dumpers and put an end to it was to lie in wait for the businessman’s lackey, follow him back to the business and charge the owner. Nothing has ever been done and the dumping continues unabated.

There have been attempts to save the city. Led by former US Ambassador to Guyana Brent Hardt, the Guyana Shines project targeted cleanups at the community level.

City wards were invited to compete against each other to see which would succeed in being the cleanest. People, particularly young people, would go into sections of the city and begin cleaning and in many instances this moved the residents of those areas to join them. This has been done in several communities with limited success, because while these groups could clean drains and parapets in one area, the problems existed in others and because the major trenches/canals were not cleared, the silt invariably returned.

But the project and the concept behind it, which is to bring about change and to see not just a cleaner city, but a cleaner Guyana has taken root. It has so far been replicated in Berbice and Linden. Mr Hardt spent just a few months shy of three years in Guyana and was perhaps the most proactive diplomat the country has seen in a long time, if not ever. Several diplomats would have come and seen the mess that Georgetown is and gone and left it. Possibly they figured that since the government and local leaders were ignoring it they should too, and who could blame them. Mr Hardt’s stance on the environment as well as in other areas, did not endear him to the government; it might have been the cause of some embarrassment. And we all know how that story ended.

Finally, it will take more than $500 million to make Georgetown shine. Sustainability is the name of the game and this can only be achieved at this point in time with the cooperation of citizens. Government would do well to latch on to the ‘Shines’ project and revive its own ‘Pick it up Guyana’ if it hopes to achieve more than just pouring money down the drain.