Dear Editor,
ON my usual visits to the National Communications Network Inc building at Cotton Field, on the Essequibo Coast, I would receive complaints from the government officers and security guards that two known individuals from the village will purposely take their cattle and loose them to graze in the government’s compound. These cattle would destroy the infrastructures while roaming on the shoulder of the road, streets and the state lands, causing the present government millions of dollars to fix them. The Cotton Field government compound has the Anna Regina Multilateral School, Guyana School of Agriculture,the Regional Education Office, the Cotton Field Secondary School, NCN building, Cotton Field Nursery school, etc.

Government officers from out of the region and within the region are residing in this compound with their families, the magistrate and the judge also live here; in the morning, the whole compound is full of cow dung, the schoolchildren and teachers who are attending these schools have to navigate among cow dung to get to their classes. These two cow owners are being employed by the regional administration of Region Two; in the previous administration they were given authority to graze their animals freely in the compound, because they were the family of a high official who was managing the region.I was made to understand that the magistrate at one time had ordered one of them to clean the dung from his passageway.

I think the magistrate erred, he should have instructed the police at the Anna Regina station to lock him up. I know that the new Regional Chairman, Mr Devanand Ramdatt and the Regional Executive Officer, Mr Derrick Persaud, will put an end to this nonsense. These two cow owners have a 10-acre rice field at Bush Lot backdam, just a stone’s throw away from their houses where they can graze their cows, but they choose to graze their flock of animals in the government’s compound, wrecking the physical infrastructure on which millions of dollars are being spent each year. This compound and the houses were built by Sir William Halcrow and company, a British consultant firm who came here to design the Tapakuma Irrigation scheme in the 60s.

In those days, no animals were allowed to roam and graze in the compound, it was kept clean and tidy from corner to corner; the expatriates grew beautiful flowers and the place was well landscaped. When they left Guyana, the government of the day took over the compound, government officers who were transferred from other regions were given houses in the compound and no one was allowed to rear ducks, fowls, and animals in the compound. Today it has become a grazing ground for these two men and an unholy site with cow dung. These two individuals are so brazen, they will tie their cows on the gate of the Anna Regina Multilateral School and government fences.

Something urgently has to be done about this lawlessness; the regional administration must act urgently to remove these animals which are destroying the revetment. Over the years, government and the region have made massive investments from its budget into this compound, the millions of dollars spent on streets, roads, fences and school facilities have been invested to create favourable conditions for the officers, teachers, magistrate, judges and schoolchildren who spent most of their time working and living there. The region must now ensure that the taxpayers get real benefits from this investment.

The region has lately approved $ 862,500 for general repairs to the VSO living quarters in the compound; $ 1,410,230 for general repairs to the REDO living quarters; general repairs to timber revetment at the education department; $3,417,460 general repairs to the bridge approach to Cotton Field,compound; and $ 1,779,460 in general repairs to the fence at the Cotton Field Nursey School. We must not allow these millions to go down the drain by roaming animals in the compound.

Regards
Mohamed Khan