Latest update May 14th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 09, 2010 Editorial
A man died by drowning in the Canje River and had it not been for an identification of the victim, the nature of the drowning would have passed unnoticed. Indeed, people die by drowning all the time, sometimes the result of a swim that went wrong or because of some boating incident that proved disastrous.
Guyana is known as the Land of Many Waters because of the multitude or rivers and creeks and other waterways. Some of these waterways are nothing more than facilities to take water to agricultural lands and to drain excess water from the land. However, there are the large waterways like the rivers that actually separate the counties and can prove a hindrance to people seeking to reach distant communities.
The Canje River has had its share of disasters but not as many as other rivers of similar size and length. This tragedy, though, had nothing with travelling along the waterway. It stemmed from the case of a man of unsound mind trying to make his way from a mental institution, back to the community he knew and called home.
Guyana has one psychiatric hospital for the hundreds of mentally ill people in the country. It stands to reason that not every mentally ill person would be house there because there are various levels of mental illness. Some of the illnesses are so serious that the individual requires isolation. Sometimes the mental institution is home to people who commit violent crimes but who have been deemed mentally incapable of standing trial.
In Guyana, for the greater part, a person is sent to the institution on an order of the court. A doctor must first pronounce on the illness and the court would make that order absolute.
However, this individual who drowned was neither committed by a doctor or a court. He was a victim of the state’s penchant for providing a misleading impression to visitors. Almost every country tries to hide its less fortunate citizens from the prying eyes of visitors. Some countries wall in its shacks.
Trinidad and Tobago is no different. It did just that when United States President Barack Obama visited that country for the summit of the Americas.
In Guyana, we pick up our roadside poor and mentally ill and take them to remote locations. During the hosting of Carifesta, we picked up the pavement dwellers and installed some of them at the Night Shelter in La Penitence.
Some were taken to distant locations and let out with the knowledge that they would be away from the city for some time.
In this case, the authorities picked up Dwayne Vieira as the UNASUR Summit approached and installed him at the Fort Canje Psychiatric Hospital. Vieira was not the only one taken to the hospital. Not being among the more violent, he was free to come and go as he pleased.
The difference was that he should not have been seen by the visitors.
But Vieira did seem to mind so he left the compound, as disoriented as some mentally ill people would be and headed to the Canje River, perhaps believing that he could swim back to the city that he knew.
The authorities are offering, tongue in cheek, and the excuse that Vieira might have been released from the institution. But if that were the case they would have called his relatives to collect him. Then again, the government is not known to spend money on that which is not important. Vieira was not important in the scheme of things. He was mentally ill and a nuisance to the society. If he were not, then he would not have been picked up.
This can only happen in Guyana. His relatives are not going to pursue the legal option. No one is going to accuse the government of kidnapping him and transporting him to an unknown location. And to simplify matters, he is now dead. Such is the fate of the less fortunate in Guyana.
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