The recent release by the Ministry of Public Works of a statement on the subject of an “Update on Emergency Repairs to MV Kimbia & MV Barima” indicates that “remedial works” on the two vessels “are still ongoing and will be completed soon.”
The disclosure comes on the heels of the signing of an agreement between the Government of Guyana and the Government of India under which the Indian military shipbuilding company Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd. (GRSE) will build a new vessel for Guyana that will help strengthen communication links between the coast and some of the hinterland regions of Guyana.
In the context of the challenges that have long confronted Guyana in the areas of in-country communication, including the movement of both people and cargo, to and from interior to coastal locations, ordinary Guyanese as much as the business community will be monitoring progress towards the realisation of the deliverables arising out of this agreement.
To return to the matter of the absence from service of the MV Kimbia and the MV Barima, what this means is that the downtime for these vessels places constraints on the efficiency of communication links between swathes of coastal and hinterland Guyana, a circumstance which, for all kinds of reasons, is, to say the least, undesirable.
The fact that these two vessels appear to require considerable attention, simultaneously, raises the question as to whether or not there exists a maintenance and repairs regime for these vessels and whether these regimes are being followed.
We believe that answers to these questions should be forthcoming from the Ministry of Public Works and the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD).
Government, over time, has arrogated to itself the temerity to pronounce on issues of particular national importance in the kind of take-it-or-leave-it manner which, all too often, is devoid of any sense of accountability or, for that matter, concern with the consequences of prevarication and delay. This is nothing new.
There can be no question that the creation of sustainable links between the coastal and interior regions of Guyana in order to facilitate the movement of both people and cargo is critical to the country’s development. Whatever other promises the country’s oil and gas pursuits might hold, development must be informed by a certain level of strategic thinking that addresses issues like the fashioning of an infrastructural network designed to create a wholeness that has to do with both the singularity of our country as well as that critical sense of territorial integrity, which, for us, is an important issue at this time. Where we neglect to be mindful of these tenets we remain, in more ways than one, hobbled, a physically divided country, as is clearly demonstrated by the protracted underdevelopment of our interior regions and the unmistakable trademarks of underdevelopment that include, in the instances of some regions, considerable levels of food insecurity.
All of this, in our view, comes down to the issue of holding government accountable. Experience, surely, would have taught us that leaving decision-making solely in the hands of one political administration, without vigorously pushing back against decisions that are ill thought-out and manifestly counterproductive, has not worked for us. Indeed, it is a propensity that leaves important targets unaccomplished, an outcome that is rarely if ever accompanied by anything resembling self-admonition by those who rule. Instances of incompetence and mismanagement are attended by a kind of suck-it-up-and-move-on attitude that engenders an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the populace as a whole. That continues to be the case under successive political administrations and unless decision-making begins to be more responsive to a greater sense of accountability (to the particular wishes of the people, as a whole) then, as we ought to have learnt from our experience, over the years, we are on a hiding to nowhere.
