Dear Editor,
Last week, I took a walk through part of Tiger Bay. I crossed over Rosemary Lane, went down Queen St and around on Quamina St, taking in the sights and sounds of exactly three blocks.
I was walking with an American visitor and a Guyanese teenager; I’ll call her Ashley… a 16 year old young lady who had never been in that neighbourhood before.
She was shocked at what she saw. As a result the questions came pouring out … How can people be allowed to live like that over here and this is Georgetown?
Why doesn’t the government build homes for them the way they’ve done for single-parent families in Berbice?
My reply was don’t presume that there are only single-parent families here, you know. There are families with a father and mother in place, living there. Some are grandparents shouldering responsibility for their grandchildren.
Don’t they have jobs, she asked? Some of them do I said, but their jobs may not pay them enough to allow them to pay rent anywhere else. Others aren’t getting jobs for various reasons. Some work part time – once or twice a week- or whenever they can ‘catch dey han’.
The teen was stunned – ‘Miss I can’t get over this – the President lives on the next block – can’t he walk over and see what’s going on? No street lights, no running water in the homes, look at people bathing in the alleyways – that means there’s no running water, look at the dirty drains and the big holes on Queen St! This is 2019 miss – this is Georgetown!’ She was truly disconcerted by all that she observed.
And she went on – ‘ the dirty drains miss … look at the big holes in the street that anybody could fall into in the dark – the President needs to see this – all he has to do is walk around the corner and he can do something about it’. The level of her distress was equal only to her conviction that the President would be the one to turn to for help.
Her conclusion was that children shouldn’t be living in those conditions and that the Government in her young mind, specifically the President – should and could ‘do something about it.’
I will write a letter to the papers, I said and we will see if he does walk over and see what’s going on.
So this is the letter I promised one of our concerned Guyanese youths, that I would write.
Editor, we trust that someone – in Public Relations, in Media Relations, someone with the responsibility of getting community feedback from the Ministry of the Presidency, maybe the Prime Minister who lives on the block next to State House – brings this teen’s well-intentioned concerns to the attention of Tiger Bay’s most prominent neighbour, the President.
I’m sure that the residents of Tiger Bay would appreciate a personal visit.
Yours faithfully,
Ann Rodrigues
