Guyana Observer News

What if this was your daughter?

Thursday, 07 May 2009

I moved in to my new address in Turkeyen, a community that is the neighbour of the Caricom Secretariat, from Wortmanville two years ago. When the house was in its construction stage, I saw a hole in the middle of the UG Access Road. A better word is aperture because it was a small opening at the time, but nevertheless unacceptable. This eyesore is just past the gated housing estate that the Gafoor Group of Companies recently built on the UG Access Road if you are traveling south. It would be just before the Gafoor building if you are going north.
Month after month, year after year that aperture grew and grew and grew and no one cared. It was as if Guyana was an abandoned enclave during the war in Bosnia. Today that huge hole, dead center in the UG access Road, has become a nightmare. Last Saturday, a terrible accident occurred, not near to the opening, not close to it but right on top of it.
At around 17.30 hours a mother, daughter and father were traveling north on the UG Access Road, when a fast speeding minibus drove head on into the car. The father is in hospital with broken limbs, and one of Guyana’s prettiest teenagers has been seriously injured.
I don’t know what caused the accident but people told me the driver was going so fast that when he reached the crater, he tried to avoid it but hadn’t the time. He could have had the time but he was going too fast. He ran away and is yet to be caught.
If arrested and charged, I hope this man is sentenced to life imprisonment. This tragedy should not have happened. Countless others will be victims of accidents not necessarily on the roadways but in other forms, because while the Government spends billions of dollars on foreign events, the obsolete physical infrastructure of Guyana will endanger the lives of many citizens.
Good citizens took the man, wife and daughter to the Georgetown Public Hospital. The father’s legs were crushed. The daughter had severe upper body damage. Only the daughter was seen after three hours of waiting. The family had a blood relation with a judge, and he intervened to get them to a private hospital. This is Guyana for you.
Mrs. Janet Jagan, two months before she died, wrote in her column that Guyana has a better medical system than the US because the US hasn’t got free medical care. Please check the past two months of Mrs. Jagan’s Mirror columns and you will find that article. It is interesting to know that all Mrs. Jagan’s grandchildren live in Canada and the US where there isn’t free medical treatment.
So why didn’t I fix the hole with local help? I tried to, with a proposal of cement and stones, but one of the retired Guysuco officials who is my neighbour explained to me the nature of the crater and opined that such an attempt will not work. He explained that what I call a hole is in fact a collapse of the road.
If you pour concrete mixture it will not work and will increase the size of the monster. In other words, you cannot proceed with concrete patch work. Where is Minister Robeson Benn?
I have to be careful what I write about him because he threatened me with legal action a few weeks ago. But the question that must be asked is if there is a maintenance section in the Ministry of Works. I don’t think there has ever been such a division in any Ministry or at GWI or GPL.
Guyanese are living in one of the worst countries in the world with one of the world’s most horribly incompetent governments. More pretty teenagers are going to be damaged if we do not change this government.
In 2000, I went up to teach at the Berbice University. On my first day, waiting to cross, I saw termites feasting on one of the greenheart pillars that upkeep the stelling. One year later, the tiny termites were still having their food. I did a column on it.
No one in Government makes frequent checks on wharves, roads, electricity poles etc. No one runs the affairs of Guyana. So craters on the highways, rotting electricity poles, leaking pipes, overgrown weeds in the Lamaha Canal, where the city gets its drinking water, live on forever.
Those who have power find time to attack the private media and spend money to bring foreign dignitaries to Guyana. In the meantime, their children are sent abroad to live in modern lands. Some voters are really stupid people.

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