…complain of garbage pile-up near bus park

MINIBUS drivers of the Route 42 (Georgetown to Timehri), are appealing to authorities to intervene on the garbage and unhygienic conditions of the drains at the bus park, which they say are being caused by illegal dumping by vendors in the area.

When contacted on the issue, Mayor of Georgetown, Ubraj Narine, said he would encourage the drivers to come and see him so that an arrangement could be worked out, but noted that the garbage in the city does not appear out of nowhere, and the minibus operators and their passengers just as much contribute to the issue. “It’s not the Mayor and the councillors that dirty the place, it is our own Guyanese people, business people, car drivers, bus drivers and vendors who play a big role in having the city in this condition. You can’t blame one and not blame the next. The bus drivers need to come and have a meeting with us and we can get things going for them,” Narine expressed.

Many of the drivers, however, are not part of the United Minibus Union (UMU), the only recognised bargaining body for minibuses in Guyana. When contacted UMU President Eon Andrews said that, notwithstanding their continued complaints, the drivers are slow to join the Union. Nonetheless he noted that he would be willing to make representation for the drivers when he has a meeting with City Hall later this week, on another matter.
The drivers say that the situation is making it difficult for the passengers to get in and out of the buses when loading. “You can’t put off passengers on the turn, is lock up right away, but when you come here and the garbage here neither you can’t throw off, when I come just now I had to wait before the passengers could come out,” commented 26-year-old Maceyo Vanrossum, whose minibus was parked right next to a pile of garbage as he waited his turn in the queue.

Narine noted, and the drivers agreed, that City Council’s sanitary workers do visit the area and remove garbage. However, garbage consistently returns. “Everybody has a role to play including the Mayor and City Council but I am playing my role, because we have people out there cleaning up, but when it’s finished cleaning go back out there in the afternoon there is more garbage there,” Narine said.

One driver, Bob, only name given, agreed that: “Even though the council would come through and they clean by the time you come back in the morning its back to square one.”
The drivers say they have even tried to take care of the situation themselves, but even those measures are futile to the consistency of the garbage replacement.
“We does try to pay them junkie but they can’t do the work because when they do a lil’ thing next day you come is rubbish again,” Vanrossum said.

Guyanese are well-known for a persistent culture to dump their refuse any and everywhere without care, particularly in the city where the garbage constantly end up in the water ways, clogging them and resulting in flooding. Though continuous measures have been put in place, over the years, to deal with the garbage, very little has been done to deal with the culture and Guyanese mindset.

The drivers are alleging that the fault is on vendors selling in front of the abandoned GNCB building on Lombard Street.

“When the vendors give the garbage to the junkies for them to throw it away the junkies come at the back here and throw it here,” noted 39-year-old Bevon Haynes, who drives the Georgetown to Mocha route within the 42 Route.

Fifty- year old driver Roselyn Caesar asserted that: “They must put stiffer penalties on the vendors and people in the market who sending the junkies to throw away the rubbish in the drain.”

Caesar also noted that the area does not have any sanitary facility, which leads to most of the male bus drivers relieving themselves on the lamp-post on the street, by the drain.

The Georgetown to Mocha sub-route buses are worst affected by the situation, as their line is location right next to the garbage-filled drains. The buses of the 42 Route were moved to Water Street and the street south of the abandoned GNCB building since August, 2018, when the Stabroek Square area where they were previously located was used for the relocation of vendors from the dilapidated Stabroek Wharf. Narine said the bus drivers and their passengers are not without blame, and noting that the Council has been clearing the area, notwithstanding the buses not paying fees to the municipality, saying that: “The bus drivers sometimes have the people throwing out things from their bus, and it is unfair because the bus drivers do not pay anything to the Council. They are supposed to get a permit to operate in the city. But we get nothing from the bus drivers or taxi drivers that operate at Stabroek market.”