If you asked Georgetowners what was at the top of their wish list for the capital in 2015, the majority of them would probably say flood relief. On Tuesday last week, all those out-of-towners who came into the city to do some Christmas shopping got an inkling of what the denizens of the nation’s largest population centre have been complaining about for years. They were greeted by another of those ‘flash floods’ – a euphemism for the flooding which occurs because of blocked outfalls, improperly dug drains and broken culverts, etc. Maybe the rain lasted for four hours or thereabouts, but the brief duration of the downpour notwithstanding, there were some parts of Georgetown where the water still had not run off the following day. Those were the areas where the water had nowhere to go, and the citizens had to wait on the slow process of evaporation.
Now Minister of Local Government Norman Whittaker – sensibly, it must be admitted – has had nothing to say on this development, but as it was, his instinct for garrulity had already found its natural outlet the day before the rain made its unwelcome visitation. There he was, snug and smug in his office (which is way above the water line), at his end-of-year press conference, extolling all the work his ministry had done during 2014.
Aside from the ‘Clean up my Country’ campaign, which, it should be noted, while improving the environment in a general sense, has done very little for the city’s drainage, it is hard to know what Georgetowners should celebrate in terms of the work of the ministry this year. As far as next year is concerned, Mr Whittaker was reported as saying that they would be intensifying their investigations into buildings constructed on government reserves as well as the parking of trucks on the roads. In addition, he told a less than spellbound media corps, they would be looking at noise and odour nuisance with the aim of reducing it. There was not a word about drainage.
That omission aside, did he not know that Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee had committed himself to tackling noise nuisance some years ago, and that he made very little progress in reducing it? Considering that the Minister of Local Government does not have the resources at his disposal that Mr Rohee has, what makes him think that the citizens of this nation expect him to do any better than his colleague?
Then according to reports Mr Whittaker said that his ministry had channelled a lot of funding into developing and maintaining “market spaces and tarmacs.” All well and good, but in the meantime Kitty Market has become a danger zone, Bourda Market is a health hazard every time it rains because it floods so badly, and Stabroek Market looks decrepit at the front and is dilapidated at the back. In October contracts were signed for work to be done on three city markets under the ‘Clean up my country’ initiative, one of which was for the desilting of internal drains at Bourda. Has this work not been embarked on as yet? Or was it done and Bourda still flooded the following day? The citizenry would really like to know.
And as for poor Kitty Market, which was not included in the original contracts, the Minister said at the time the nature of the repairs was not manageable for the project. So is it just to be allowed to disintegrate without any intervention from government? There was nothing in the reports on the Minister’s end of year briefing to suggest that he had anything to say about this; nary a word.
Then the captive media corps heard about his ministry’s budget for 2014 surpassing the one for the previous year. All that can be said on this subject is that it hasn’t made any impact on the state of the city; while the ‘Clean up…’ campaign has had an impact on the environment (although for how long, no one knows), the funding for that did not come from local government.
What one wants to hear is that Mr Whittaker has persuaded his cabinet colleagues that serious work should be undertaken on Georgetown’s drainage infrastructure; they don’t even have to start from scratch, since there are enough reports from the experts who came down here as a consequence of the 2005 flood. It is not something, however, that can be done under the auspices of the Local Government Ministry; it would have to be under the Ministry of Works, which like the government as a whole gives the impression of being allergic to Georgetown.
Except for cases of unusual precipitation, the capital should not flood every time it rains – certainly not after a couple of hours. And if there is flooding because the kokers are closed, for example, the water should drain off from all parts of the city very quickly once they are open again (and in those parts served by pumps, whether the tide is in or out should not be an issue). This is a hydraulic society, and keeping ourselves for the most part high and dry has been our stock in trade not for years or even decades, but for centuries.
Previous disasters in times gone by have led to responses to prevent a repetition, so what is the matter with the present authorities? Are they less resourceful, less competent, less ingenious and less visionary, or is it simply that they are totally lacking in common-or-garden management skills? The run-of-the-mill flooding we are experiencing at present is eminently capable of solution, so why won’t the government solve the problem?
The obvious hypothesis is that they don’t want to solve it. Evidence in favour of that theory comes in the shape of the irrepressible Ms Carol Sooba, acting Town Clerk, who has eccentric tastes in personal security and obstinate ones when it comes to the matter of organizing essential works for the capital. There are no indications whatever that she is pleading a case for rehabilitating the city drainage in the hallowed halls of the Minister of Local Government; in fact, no one is too sure what she does, other than involve herself in wrangles over the etiquette of statutory meetings. And yet, the Minister has put his faith in her and she is directly answerable to him, so citizens are hardly likely to conclude that the government has any interest whatsoever in improving the quality of their lives.
Of course, traditionally the government has always sought to blame the Mayor and City Council for the ongoing fiasco which is Georgetown; it is all part of a political game. The problem is that the capital’s residents ‘done play’ a long time ago. Everyone is tired of it and no one is fooled by it. The financial resources lie with the government and some of the skills lie with the government – or at least within the government’s power to hire – so why won’t they do something about keeping GT more dry than wet in the rainy season?
There is one other thing not directly connected to the flooding. During the year government announced some funding to undertake preliminary salvage work on City Hall. That at least was an eminently positive move. But it is not clear whether work of any kind has yet started. Unless they want to earn the reputation of being the last word in philistinism, Ms Sooba and her bosses should put a great deal more energy into trying to save the Georgetown’s premier heritage structure; the city’s residents will not forgive them if they don’t. In addition to that, Ms Sooba could not possibly want the building collapsing on her new sofa.
