THE Guyana Tourism Association (GTA) has announced that the GTA will be

partnering with the Ministry of Local Government in an effort to tidy up the city and spruce up its surroundings for the season.
According to its Director, Indranauth Haralsingh, the GTA has already deployed a team to assist with the clean up, and GTA would also be assisting with the further beautification of the city by helping to paint washed out and discoloured culverts around the city, which he said can sometimes be described as eyesores.
He noted that these activities are not just being planned for the holiday season, but are rather an ongoing project which will be sustained, and GTA will be there to assist in any way it can.
Haralsingh said he would like to appeal to everyone to take personal responsibility for their litter.
He stressed that one should dispose of litter in a proper manner, and should adhere to the sayings that ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ and ‘A dirty surrounding reflects a dirty mind’.
This gesture by the GTA is most welcome and it is hoped that other organisations, the private sector and other civil organisations and individuals would come on board to rescue our capital city from its current atrocious environmental state.
Apart from the national interest, restoring Georgetown back to its former glory days of being dubbed the ‘Garden City’ has special vested sectoral interest for the GTA because no tourist would ever want to come to a city which is characterised by garbage and littering.
Therefore, having a clean, tidy and healthy capital city is of primary interest to the GTA.
A few months ago, a most laudable initiative by the foreign diplomatic missions here to help restore Georgetown to its former glory kicked off in spectacular fashion, but it seems to have lost its momentum because our people seem not be interested in this noble objective, and maybe the foreign diplomats decided that if the nationals do not seem interested in the environmental conditions of their own capital city then why should they be concerned.
Nevertheless, it is good to see that increasingly people from all walks of life are recognising the need to do something tangible to restore Georgetown to its former glory.
But what has to be recognised is that while short and medium term interventions will definitely help to bring relief to Georgetown with respect to its deplorable and unacceptable environmental condition, there is an imperative need for a comprehensive and permanent solution to the garbage and littering scourge that plagues especially Georgetown.
In this regard, the biggest challenge is to reverse callous lawlessness and the attitude in relation to the cavalier disposal of garbage.
We have to work tirelessly through imaginative and innovative measures to change this current irresponsible and reckless attitude in relation to the environment. If we do not tackle this problem successfully then we will only be able to deal with the larger problem in a limited way. In fact, if there was not this current unfortunate attitude, this problem would not have become as monstrous as it is.
In other words, we cannot treat the symptoms of the disease and expect it to go away. We have to eliminate the cause of the disease before it goes away and, in this case, while there are many factors which led to this monstrous environmental problem, the major one is the reckless attitude of our people, which was aided by the non-enforcement of laws that govern littering and improper disposal of garbage for an extremely long period of time.
This unfortunate state of affairs has reached an unbearable level and therefore, it has to be swiftly reversed or else it will eat away at the sinews of society and destroy it like a cancer.
But the problem is not only the government’s or that of the City Council. It is everybody’s business including parents, teachers, and the entire society.
Like our national poet Martin Carter said: “All are involved, all are consumed.”