Dear Editor,
As we seek to enjoy another weekend, I still express the phrase “Things that bother me.” The most glaring of course is another adventure by our DPP who withdrews private charges against the Crime Chief, but similar powers have not been exercised in charges brought against Detective Sergeant Dion Bascom. Let me make it abundantly clear, I do not hold a brief for either Bascom or the Crime Chief, save to say, that in a viable democracy where only a few days ago, we celebrated the virtue and value of openness of the media. This means as we’ve seen all over the free world that citizens are entitled to hear both or better yet all sides of a story but it appears that in Guyana there is a plan to suffocate any side of a story that would make the elite uncomfortable.
I wonder Editor, if anyone called a member of the elite a x,y,z or what have you, and that person turned to the Courts for justice, whether with the same alacrity and no explanation, the DPP would have their charge withdrawn. A few years ago, a popular TV and Radio series was titled “Different strokes for different folks,” sadly this now seems to be the nature of things in what we hear from the top brass as being One Guyana. So, this weekend the big boys in the Government, what I described as the oligarchy, are bulldozing structures on Independence Boulevard that existed over thirty years. This area, I knew as a child to be the Punt Trench Canal, but was filled and renamed Independence Boulevard.
Whatever may be the intentions of Central Government to build a three-lane highway, we are told maybe, there are two things which are bothersome, first, this area is within the Municipality of the Georgetown City Council and there has been neither consultation nor agreement for this project with the Georgetown Mayor & City Council. Second, if the powers that be took trouble to examine the ideas contained in the plan for the re-development of Georgetown prepared by Professor Akbar Khan, they would know that the filling up of the Punt Trench Canal, because our imperial masters and sugar barons no longer needed that water-way to transport the sugar from East Coast Estates to the ships docked on the East Bank of Demerara River, they tricked the then Municipality who bought it for the token sum of one dollar.
The Municipality, thinking they were acquiring valuable land, filled it in, ignoring the fact that the Punt Trench Canal was used not only to transport raw sugar in Punts but served as an important irrigation facility for the La Penitence, Albouystown and contiguous areas. This was a monumental mistake and in discussions with Professor Khan it was deemed prudent to re-open, even though less elaborate, that traditional waterway. As we see happening today, we ponder on the wisdom that the “road to ruin” is oft time lined with good intentions, but I ask again, when would we listen to experience, when would we understand the importance of knowing our history, avoiding those mistakes that are etched in our history. For whatever reason, we seem unwilling or unable to learn.
Sincerely,
Hamilton Green
Elder
