Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 31, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I live on the Railway Embankment with one house separating my home and the Caricom Secretariat. I look out from my study window and see how the Philistines have taken over the International Convention Centre. There have been three Hindu weddings there, one birthday celebration and last week, the Government sponsored a Phagwah event on the lawns.
Coloured power enveloped the Caricom Secretariat, the nearby buildings and plastered itself on my window panes. Interestingly this was the second Government-hosted Phagwah celebration, the other at State House. Never do you see the Government hosting a festive occasion for any Emancipation Day event.
One could just imagine the dilapidated state the washroom facilities are in. Three years ago I was at the Centre to attend a stakeholders’ meeting with the Ethnic Relations Commission. Apart from no running water, the restrooms were typical of such structures in public places – non-functioning. If the power people use the Centre for bacchanalian pleasures then obviously the washrooms are going to be destroyed.
After one wedding night was over, I saw the clean-up campaign and there were mountains of broken bottles. The Nazis in Germany had their nasty ways, but I doubt that they would have used an international convention centre for wild parties. I doubt that happens anywhere else in the world.
As they say in common parlance; the people who run Guyana are something else. How can you hold a raucous party at an international convention building? Isn’t that the equivalent of having a nudist party in a cathedral? This may well happen, since many Guyanese tell me that God has gone out of Guyana.
The street lights on the Railway Embankment go off after 22:00 hours. The only lamp missing is the one outside my home and this has been so the past three years. When the lamps fade in the night, the Railway Embankment is an area of immense darkness. If you think it is pitch black on the ocean on a moonless night, then come to the Railway Embankment after midnight.
About two months ago, my daughter got me up at 2 A.M. to show me a body on the road outside our home that dozens of cars had rolled over, mashing it to pieces. Several cars were damaged because the drivers would not have been able to see the body parts. We couldn’t go back to sleep. How can you sleep when right outside your residence, cars are wheeling over a body?
At daybreak, it turned out to be a calf. You don’t want to think about it, but one night it will happen. Tragedies happen all the time in this country and countless are waiting to happen.
I would advise the poorer folks who read this column, not to use their bicycles and motor-cycles after 10 P.M. on the Railway Embankment. You are endangering your life. Drivers cannot see you.
I once wrote that the most comical politician in the world is the Director of Sports in Guyana, Neil Kumar. The funniest politician in the world is Robeson Benn. Benn said he was driving home one night and he heard a calypso over NCN that he didn’t like so into the NCN compound he drove and the calypso was removed.
Well it appears that it was for only that night that Benn drove on the streets. Other than that he drives his car in the clouds in the skies. For three years now only two dozen lamps are working on the Atlantic highway. Darkness has returned as when we drove on that road ten years ago.
Benn, the subject Minister, cannot see that the street lamps have died (as Andrew Lloyd Webber puts it in his musical, “Cats”). He cannot see for one reason only; he never drives on that highway. If he does then he must have observed the lights have gone out.
My opinion is that he knows. But this Minister is more interested in fixing the schedule of calypsos to be played on NCN than fixing the lights on one of the most dangerous roadways in the entire country. For this reason I describe him as the globe’s funniest Government Minister.
It was heart-breaking to read that a police patrol ran into a huge hole on a bridge at Strathspey Railway Embankment and one policeman lost his life. What a horrible tragedy that came one day after the Government’s budget was tabled in the National Assembly. Why did he have to die on a road that urgently needs fixing, but billions are being spent on “The Shining”?
”The Shining” is a Stephen King novel made into a popular movie about a ghost hotel. Who is going to occupy the Marriott?
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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