Dear Editor,

AMERICAN economist, entrepreneur, and university professor, Carl J. Schramm, defines a failing city as one that can never expect to return to its former prosperity. He must have been referring to Georgetown, the capital of Guyana.

Where else in the world, could a municipality owe two contractors more than three hundred million dollars for garbage collection services provided over the last two years and refuse to pay them, but expect them to continue working nonetheless? And worse when they decide to make a payment to these contractors, they do so with rubber cheques that could not be processed, because the Council had non-sufficient funds (NSF). To add insult to injury, they then hired an additional contractor who lacks the tools, equipment and human resource capacity to do the job, but who is a friend of one of the ‘Big Ones’ at City Hall, in order to create more debt.

Where else in the world would a bankrupt municipality rent scores of plastic portable toilets at more than $82,000 and subsequently more than $90,000 per month each, rather than buying their own or building permanent public conveniences?
Where else in the world would the only abattoir in the capital city that is supposed to ensure that best practices in food hygiene and meat production is maintained, be in such an unclean, decrepit state and where the animals are bludgeoned to death in such a barbaric manner?

Where else in the world would the City Constabulary stand idly by and watch bank robberies, mugging, pick pocketing and other crimes being commissioned on a daily basis without doing a thing to prevent it?
Where else in the world would a group of engineers and administrators just sit idly by and watch and dwell in the historic edifice City Hall and watch it crumble without doing the slightest of remedial works to save it from falling apart?

Georgetown is a failed city, that is doing its best to take the country down the toilet and I don’t mean the $82,000 per month portable toilets with it.

Sincerely
Jermain Johnson