Dear Editor,
In view of some letters on communication, trustworthiness, governance and even evaluation criteria, I wish to call attention to my recent experience of communicating with Guyana’s EPA about a car-wash bay that operates opposite me. My first email to the complaints section of the EPA was sent on February 22, 2022, and I last heard from the EPA on August 10, 2022. In the interim, there was only one significant development, albeit one that has produced no results (for me at any rate): The Guyana Police Force was given ‘training in noise management.’
An indirectly related development was the launch of an operation by the Ministry of Public Works to remove encumbrances from the roads and reserves. This latter might have included the parapets and drains that were covered over with concrete to facilitate the operation of the wash bay. There were, of course, follow up complaints to the EPA that included video clips; and there was a visit by the EPA and the NDC which revealed that the wash bay operator had not even sought approval from the latter agency. There was, however, a very cosy conversation between the leader of the EPA team and the operator, held at a distance from the rest of the EPA and NDC officials. Something tells me that that was where the real communication occurred.
The EPA indicated on August 10, 2022, that “enforcement exercises are being conducted jointly and we are taking a targeted approach in dealing with hotspot areas (one of which is the Diamond/Grove area) during the course of this month.” That month, August 2022, has now come and gone but very little has changed. I, and all the other residents in my area, now have to wonder if our living experience in Guyana – that includes trucks hurtling past our homes at break-neck speed every three minutes or so, with horns blasting even at midnight every night – doesn’t reflect a simple truth that is being communicated to us by our regulatory agencies, i.e., that the only people who matter to these agencies are the ones who have regard only to themselves and their self-interest.
Mindful of the unhappiness that accompanies wanting the things we cannot have, and of the power of popular sentiment over the quality of our institutions, I tell myself that I should not want the things that I cannot have, even if those things are beneficial to us all in the long run.
Sincerely,
Thomas B. Singh
