Dear Editor,
GEORGETOWN is the capital city of Guyana, but it’s in a very bad state because of the number of vagrants, touts, beggars, thieves, and white collar crooks who roam in it. I wish to begin my discourse with the vagrants. The word “vagrant” can be defined as “one who has no established residence, and wanders idly from place to place without lawful or visible means of support.”As I walked around the Guyana Post Office Corporation Building, I counted over twenty vagrants sleeping on cardboard boxes. They eat, sleep, urinate and defecate there, and their presence makes the place a living hell for shop owners, citizens, and those who work at GPOC.
But they don’t stop there, they have extended their living quarters to the Fogarty’s Building, doing the same filthiness, but the administrators at City Hall turn a blind eye to all this filthiness from these vagrants.
Their urine and faeces stink from a distance and attract lots of flies. Near GPOC there are a lot of places that sell food and snacks, and Fogarty’s still have their Rose Bud Cafe. How unsanitary this is for those who sell food there to inhale the stench from these vagrants’ excrement; worst yet, people have to sit and eat while smelling the stench.
It makes us look really bad when foreigners visit the Rose Bud cafe to eat. We have a large number of new ministries, with lots of competent and educated ministers, but none seems to see these vagrants make the city worse than a pig pen.
A building should be erected to house these vagrants. The Ministry of Social Protection, or the Ministry of Social Cohesion, or The Ministry of Human Services needs to build living quarters for these vagrants, to keep the city clean.
They should clean them up, train them, and put them in a rehab. centre, since most of them are very young and can still work. Their lives are being destroyed by drugs and alcohol.
City Hall has been very busy with the parking meter situation, planning to suck every dollar out of the citizens of Georgetown; they should now be busy building a home for these vagrants, and for the women who beg with more than six children on the pave, in order for us to have a good, green and clean environment.
We have endless beggars all over Georgetown, most of whom are women with children. These same children from unwanted fathers and poor mothers grow up to be bandits and criminals.
Millions were wasted on the Jubilee, why not waste tax payers’ money by building homes for the poor and needy, and help them and their children — who beg — to be better citizens of this beautiful land of ours?
I hope the Minister of Finance would put housing for vagrants in his next budget. Guyana is a nation dying slowly in poverty and human degradation while our leaders drive Hummers and Cadillacs.
I now come to the touts, who make the bus and car parks a living hell as they rob people from time to time or set thieves to rob people. They need to be picked up by the police and be made to clean the city.
These touts are all over the city, from the courts to the GRA to the Immigration Department to commercial banks and other ministries. They always seem to be connected to a white collar criminal in an office, who can get you a document instantly for a nice fat price. So we can still see that corruption is still the order of the day. You are pushed around daily at offices for a document, all because you have to “grease somebody’s palm with some greens”.
Is this the good and green economy we want for Guyana?
The thieves lurk all over: banks, courts, embassies, ministries. They watch like a vulture from a mountain, looking to see whom to pounce on next. We have run out of jail space for young thieves who just want to live like parasites on innocent citizens who work hard for their money. If we enforce more serious laws in Guyana, we would be able to live in a better society. It’s very sad that those who make the laws break the laws.
Drugs destroy people, driving them to be thieves and vagrants; yet many lawmakers are calling to legalize marijuana smoking.
Guyana needs a new vision of honest political leadership that will take us into this new contemporary era for us to compete with the world. We must have a vision to eradicate poverty from our society, as well as begging, stealing, corruption and crime. Crime has plagued this nation for a very long time.
What Guyana needs is a better economic policy, like implementing better salaries for her citizens; at least $140,000 per month for the average Government worker. The police, teachers, public servants, and labourers will live in Guyana and not run out for better jobs and living standards. We have to learn to keep our people. If the politicians can eat turkey and steak, then we ought to be able to afford the same. A true leader will put others before himself because of his love and concern for his people.
Yours faithfully,
REV. GIDEON CECIL
