Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
May 18, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I have one daughter in my marriage and three outside daughters – Gypsy, Dusty and Princess. The first two are cats. The other is my dog. Believe me; you can come to love your pet with equal emotions and have deep sentiments about them just as you do for a loved one. I am going to drive my three pets around Georgetown and show them how the city has become clean.
Then I will put them on the bonnet of the car and ask them to take a very close look at the workers to see the conditions under which they slave to restore the physical ambience of the capital.
What is the point? That many humans would not let their pets dwell in the dirty surroundings that the Georgetown cleaners are forced to work in. Since the new government came into being, in partnership with the City Council, there has been a stupendous effort to remove the unspeakable dirtiness that literally overran the capital under the PPP.
I think if there was anything stupid and nauseating about the United Nation’s role in the world, that would be its award of the title of Champion of the Earth to the then Guyana President, Bharrat Jagdeo.
Mr. Jagdeo presided over a country where rubbish was as perennial as the grass; in fact it supplanted the grass. I honestly thought it was Georgetown only but my eyes were opened up during the 2015 election campaign. Every village I went to, the streets were littered with rubbish. I saw in Region three trenches filled with garbage preventing the flow of water.
At Enmore, it was disgraceful. At Rosignol, it was abominable. In the midst of this uncivilized ubiquity of filth, the UN declared Guyana’s President, Champion of the Earth. No wonder President Reagan wanted to remove the UN from the United States.
There is a galaxy of political administrators of the central and local governments occupying Georgetown since the new regime took office a year ago (look out for my analysis of the Coalition’s one year in office; obviously I will call it as I see it; this column may be the first in the series) dreaming of city restoration but it’s a galaxy of exploiters who put workers in oceans of miasma to fumigate a city and leave them without protective gears that even 16th century workers were given at the time.
By now every Georgetowner must have seen in the district where he/she lives the semi-civilized conditions under which these people work. Very few of them have long boots. I am saying without fear of contradiction that fewer than five percent of all cleaning groups, collectively speaking, that I have seen throughout the city of Georgetown wore and are wearing boots designed for such unclean, physical tasks.
I live in Turkeyen within the border of Georgetown but still not in the heart of the city itself. I go to Kaieteur News every day. I shop at the food outlets almost daily. So I see most of the cleaning crews at work.
At Shiv Chanderpaul Drive and Robb Street, outside Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, a cleaning crew stopped me to complain about the heartless attitude of this galaxy of politicians who are more concerned with appearances than workers’ health. The complaint was that gloves and disinfectants were never given to them. This is why I am going to take my three daughters to show them the hypocrisy of the APNU+AFC Government and the APNU+AFC City Council. The appearance of the city is more important than the health of thousands of poor people.
Reminds me of President Granger’s words that we should be careful what we copy from the developed world.
Well here is one cultural practice that we should copy from the developed world – humane treatment of workers who have to labour in poisonous environments. Thank God we are a piss poor country that does not have nuclear power plants. If we did, we should have sent technicians into those plants without protective gear.
I remember the Jagdeo Government’s heartless mistreatment of workers who were removing asbestos from UG. They took it out from the walls with their hands without gloves and masks and were dumping it onto open back trucks.
So the nation is looking forward to the Golden Jubilee where a coruscating and shiny capital city awaits the arrival of its guests. A superlative fashion built on the back of slavery in 2016. Sad to say but my three pets are treated better than the way restoration project directors treated their workers. Nietzsche’s Ûbermensch has to save Guyana. But I doubt he would ever want to.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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