Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 15, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
If I were a Minister of Government in Guyana and there were frequent travel between Guyana and a disease-ridden CARICOM sister-state, I would have called upon that state to clean up its environment and if it didn’t, then put travel restrictions on it.
CARICOM is not an integrated unit as the European Union, so people will never see CARICOM’s condemnation of political atrocities in another member-state. But with the Chikungunya and Ebola threats, CARICOM should intervene, as a matter of urgency, about the horribly, unbelievable dirty environment of a huge chunk of Guyana, that completely takes in Regions 3, 4, 5, 6 (I have seen the situation first hand in these regions).
The constant travel of CARICOM nationals between member-states necessitates this. The CARICOM Secretariat is located here. Guyanese media icon, Rafiq Khan died in Jamaica from Chikungunya-related symptoms. There are depressed areas in Kingston that are dirty and are serious health threats, but nothing compared to those large chunks of Guyana mentioned above.
CARICOM, like a majority of Caribbean people, may have no interest about Guyana and its pandemic possibility, but Guyana can take down the CARICOM region with it. There are literally hundreds of weekly travels from CARICOM islands to Guyana and back. For those CARICOM Secretariat employees from outside of Guyana, their observation of stink Guyana is confined to Georgetown.
The diplomats and Secretariat employees from the Caribbean living in Guyana don’t have to look far to see the impending disaster in this country. I live literally one minute walk to the Secretariat, so the Secretariat employees can see for themselves – the large trench outside CARICOM that stretches from Sheriff Street and goes way down the Railway Embankment has not been cleaned for years. It is a colossal mountain of overgrown weeds.
Now here is a laughable situation. That part of the trench directly outside CARICOM is in fact nicely manicured, but mosquitoes fly, don’t they? So why can’t they fly from the trench outside my home and bite the Secretariat employees? Unless the CARICOM people feel that mosquitoes do not live in water and do not fly (and maybe do not even bite).
I still can vividly see in front of my eyes the images of a visit to Block 8 of Mon Repos last week. I am convinced that other human beings from Planet Earth will not believe that people live there. The entire area is covered with wild bush. The tall bushes graze the sides of your car as you drive. The trenches for the entire area are a jungle. Litter fills every street.
And to think that the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association held a dinner last Friday evening and the featured speaker was former President Jagdeo, waxing lyrical on the environment. Jagdeo presided over the inundation of Georgetown by garbage.
The authorities at the John F. Kennedy Airport are now screening arrivals from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea for Ebola-related symptoms. How ironic is life in the world we live. The capitals of all three of these countries are not in the miasmic state as Georgetown is in Guyana. Isn’t it logical to assume that if in these countries Ebola can arise, then why not a pandemic in Region 4 when you see the environmental horror of Georgetown and Demerara?
So will CARICOM act against Guyana now that Ebola is lurking?
“The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (Philosopher, George Santayana). “God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out.” (Writer, Arthur Koestler).
The congenital defect of humans is that they never learn until it is too late. I don’t give a damn what people think of me and my cynicism towards Guyana. I love this country and have fought for its social perseveration. But the people of this country operate like no other nation on earth. No matter how we dislike the PPP Government, Guyana is not a country where opposition leaders and dissidents are being killed off, tortured and imprisoned in countless numbers. But this monumental fear will bring us to that horror if we don’t find our voices soon.
No nation on earth can be so asleep and apathetic. Such a nation may not deserve to live. If Ebola comes then it may be the coup de grâce. How painful it will be for history and civilization if when it comes to Guyana, it kills the wrong people. I may not be able to live with that bestial injustice.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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