Dear Editor,
It’s been 6 months now since I reported to the supervisor of GPL and the regional electrical inspector that a number of street lights on the public road are not working and are posing a danger to life and limb at night. I was told that this matter was reported to the electrical company which installed the lights and is responsible for their maintenance. Some 38 of these street lights which were installed along the coast by this company at a cost of $11 million are out of order and to date it has not fixed them.
At night students and teachers coming out from the Anna Regina Multilateral school, teacher training school, Guyana School of Agriculture, etc, can’t see anything at the junction of the public road where one of these street lights is located and which has not been working for the past 4 months. You don’t know when you can expect somebody to come behind you and try to rob you of your things. Not having lights at night is one of the biggest concerns of businesses and their customers.
I have been calling on the relevant authorities in the region for the last two or three weeks about this matter, but they give me the runaround. The electrical company could rectify the problem within a month, but it does not value Essequibians or they think we are a backward set of people. The quicker the Minister of Public Infrastructure can do something about it, the better off we Essequibians would be.
As I travel to Supenaam stelling at night I can see many of the street lights are not functioning and it is dangerous for motorists with animals walking on the road. The absence of lights is a factor in most of the car accidents and people are an easy target for vandals and thieves in remote and sparsely populated areas. The lack of street lights on the road towards Charity is another concern for residents, starting with those on the dangerous bends.
While sitting on my verandah I can see several lorries being parked every night on the road at a blind turn coming out from the Cotton Field street where there is no street light and which is near a pedestrian crossing. These lorries have no reflectors and are a death trap for cars and motor cyclists who could lose control and suffer a serious accident. This is an area where the traffic police hide with their radar gun to catch speeding motorists without noticing the danger of these parked lorries. There have been several fatal accidents with parked vehicles on the public road at night on the Essequibo Coast. The municipality and local authority have a statutory duty to keep roads and lighting in good repair.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
