Cow owners grazing animals in the Anna Regina government compound

Dear Editor,

On my visits to the National Communi-cations Network Inc building at Cotton Field on the Essequibo Coast, I would receive complaints from government officers and security guards that two known individuals from the village loose their cattle to graze in the government compound. The cattle are destroying the infrastructure like the revetment, which will cost the government millions of dollars to fix. The Cotton Field government compound accommodates the Anna Regina Multilateral School, the Guyana School of Agriculture, the Regional Education Office, the Cotton Field Secondary School, the NCN building, Cotton Field Nursery School, etc.

Government officers also reside in this compound with their families, as do the magistrate and the judge. In the morning the whole compound is full of cow dung, and the school children and teachers have to navigate among the cow dung to get to their classes. The two cattle owners are employed by the Region Two administration, and under the previous administration they were given permission to graze their animals in the compound. I was made to understand that the magistrate at one time had ordered one of them to clean the dung from his passageway.

These two cow owners have a 10 acre rice field, just a stone’s throw away from their house where they can graze their cows, but they choose to graze their herd of animals in the government compound.

This compound and the houses were built by Sir William Halcrow & Partners, a British engineering firm which came here to design the Tapakuma Irrigation scheme in the ʼ60s.  In those days no animals were allowed to roam and graze in the compound; it was kept clean and tidy from corner to corner. The expatriates grew beautiful flowers and the place was well landscaped. When they left Guyana the government of the day took over the compound, and government officers who were transferred from other regions were given houses there and no one was allowed to rear ducks, fowls, and animals. Today it has become a grazing ground for these two men and an unholy site with cow dung. The men are so brazen they tie their cows on the gate of the Anna Regina Multilateral school and government fences.

Something urgently has to be done about this lawlessness; the regional administration must act urgently to remove these animals which are destroying the revetment. Over the years, government and the region have made massive investments on streets, roads, fences and schools. The region must now ensure that the taxpayers get real benefit from these investments.

We must not allow these millions to go down the drain because of roaming animals in the compound.

Yours faithfully,

Mohamed Khan