Dear Editor,
THE citizens of our capital city can only hope that the ridiculous suggestion made by the Mayor and Town Clerk of Georgetown a few weeks ago about hosting a week of activities to celebrate the city’s 206th anniversary, estimated to cost a whopping $20M, was either just an April Fools’ Day Joke or merely another municipal ‘pie in the sky’ fantasy that will never see the light of day.

Seriously, what does the Georgetown Municipality have to celebrate? The bicentenary has passed six years ago without any fanfare and their sestercentennial is a way off. City Hall is 129 years old and crumbling to pieces, so there is nothing significant about that milestone, and surely cannot be celebrated until that edifice is fully rehabilitated.

Are they going to have a week of fetes whilst the Stabroek wharf remains collapsed, with a Kitty Market that is incomplete despite the passage of nearly three years and with no market clock working, with the City Hall building on the verge of collapse? With a dilapidated Abattoir that lacks up-to-date amenities, with a ruinous police training school and with all of the other municipal buildings falling apart? And with the employees and pensioners always having two and three weeks after everyone else in the country is paid their wages, salaries and pensions before getting theirs?

But who will be celebrating? Will they just be splurging on themselves with an orgy of food and expensive liquor, with fireworks and parades? Or will all of the citizens be invited to join in at the table? And where will the meat for the city banquets come from? I hope not the pig farm at the Le Repentir Cemetery?

One wonders whether they have read a 2018 Crime and Safety Report that was released recently by another country and which stated that the roads are hardly maintained while street lighting is sporadic at best? And which urges drivers to beware of stray dogs, sleeping animals and free-range livestock on our roadways, which they said share our narrow, poorly maintained roads which are lacking in sidewalks?

Therefore, it is logical to assume that the only things they could be celebrating must be their acquisition of gold star frequent flyer status for gallivanting around the world with no tangible returns, for being able to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in employee contributions for GRA, NIS and credit union without feeling the brunt of the law, for harassing and chasing vendors around town whilst giving away prime lands to friends. It seems as though since City Hall cannot celebrate its successes as there are none, they are attempting to find some humour and merriment in their failures.
Regards
Nadine Jerrick