From Benn to Patterson: The dead country

Apr 13, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Last Monday, my wife and I were cleaning her mother’s place at the junction of Hadfield Street and Louisa Row when we saw a violent commotion one corner north of us. That would be Brummel Place (Louisa Row becomes Brummel Place when it crosses over north of Hadfield Street.) As a curious media operative, I left the house and went to see what was happening. A nasty fight was in progress.
This is what happened. A Canter truck driver going north on Brummel Place at the junction with Brickdam where the traffic lights are, suddenly stepped on the brakes and the car at the back touched the rear of the pick-up. The fight began when the driver of the car slapped the Canter truck owner accusing him of careless driving.(there was no damage; I saw that for myself). The car driver demanded money for a non-existent damage and when the Canter owner accused him of extortion he slapped him. The father of the Canter-truck owner was enraged and cuffed the car driver in his face and as the say in street lingo, “pashway” was on its way.”
Race came into the picture because an AFC activist by the name of Albert Cromwell, drove up with his motorcycle and started to accuse the son of the Caner truck driver of being a coolie racist. I went up to Cromwell, told him he was not there from the start of the incident and that he should desist because after all he is a representative of the AFC who sits in the leadership of the AFC’s Region Four executive. He agreed to stay quiet. By this time there were exchanges of who was a coolie racist and who was a black racist in the crowd. The UN’s UNICEF head office is right at the junction (eastern half) and the staff was watching.
An African security guard of the Bapitist Church which is right on the corner (western half) and two African men jumped in to the argument telling the crowd that the Indian Canter truck driver was in the right because he had to brakes up to save a motorcyclist who was going east on Brickdam. A policeman came up and they explained to him what happened.
Now here is the reason for the accident which the policeman, the Canter truck driver, the car driver, Albert Cromwell and the crowds did not know. Only one person in that crowd knew what was the real cause of the accident; me. And that is because I am a Wortmanvile boy with my wife’s property one block away so I know the area well. Here is the story.
For almost a year now the stop signal to go north and to go south for drivers on Brummel Place has been stuck in a 10 minute mode. The lights need recalibrating. It means when you are on Brummel Place, you believe the red light is not working after you would have waited for about five minutes. In the meantime traffic going east and west on Brickdam has the green light. Drivers then, thinking that the red is faulty, go through it thereby clashing with drivers on Brickdam.
This is what happened with the Canter truck. Over the past year, I saw hundreds of drivers going through the red light which is working but it lasts for ten minutes.
You would think that in the 21st century, the Ministry of Public Works under Robeson Benn and now Public Infrastructure under David Patterson would have a maintenance section where a few employees would drive around Georgetown and see which signals are not working, which street lights are not working, which main arteries have huge pot holes.
That faulty red signal has been there almost a year now and no one at the Public Infrastructure Ministry knows about it. The situation was the same under “Bruk Up” Benn. Just suppose that fight had ended in death, it would have been due to the incompetence of post-colonial leaders who after fifty years of Independence cannot lead a country and will never learn how to.
I leave you with a column I wrote fifteen years ago. I taught at the Berbice Campus of UG for one year in 2000. As you drive into the ferry, you have to wait until all cars are on board so you have time to gaze. I looked at one of the pillars holding up the stelling; wood-ants were eating it. On my last day, one year after I first saw them, the wood-ants were still feasting. Where was the maintenance crew; there was none.

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