Your Eyewitness knows that folks gotta clean up after their infants and little kids. Hey!! They don’t know better, do they? But what’s the reason for the government – led by Pres Ali and a convoy of high ranking officials – cleaning up every few months or so after grown-a55 adults who should know better?? They dump their trash on the streets – from where it end up in the drains – causing their raw sewage to block them up and flood the towns and villages. Isn’t this government clean-up syndrome encouraging the miscreants who litter to move on to dumping their garbage wherever they want??
Your Eyewitness remember back in January on a clean-up mission, the President insisting that Guyanese must take responsibility for their (disgusting) littering and pull up their socks. Well, looks like – judging by the mountains of garbage retrieved from the drains in as public a place as opposite Demico House – the socks have been dropped rather than pulled up!! This confounded nonsense must stop – and right now!! This time the President looks like he got the message because he announced that it’s time for “enforcement”!!
But let’s take the biggest eyesore of all – Georgetown. It has moved from being the “Garden City” that was the envy of the Caribbean – to being the “Garbage City” that now elicits the contempt of the world. Didn’t the Lord Mayor announce that his eagle-eyed Constabulary would be fining litterers?? Whatever happened to that initiative – assuming it moved form a thought to an initiative!! The question posed is how exactly will the laws against littering be enforced?
Well, first of all the Municipalities and villages gotta provide garbage bins at strategic locations. Can’t expect folks to put garbage in their pockets, can you?!! Once that’s done, your Eyewitness proposes that rather than any monetary fines, litterers be immediately compelled to clean a 100-foot drain in the vicinity where they were snagged! And just as with other misdemeanours there can be citizen’s arrests and enforcement. All that would be needed would be two persons willing to attest that the litterer did the dirty!!
But as with all social transgressions, littering and dumping garbage won’t stop until there’s the moral consciousness developed in us Guyanese that it just ain’t right. Your Eyewitness notices that as soon as Guyanese end up in “white man country” they stop littering. What this reveals is that the self-contempt that we just aren’t “good enough” still abounds in us. Remember the old Groucho Marx quip, “I won’t belong to a club that would have me as a member”?!
Same here in dear old mudland. Unless we begin to see ourselves worthy of a clean country we’ll remain mired in garbage!!
…Remembrance Day
Well, if it’s the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month then it must be Remembrance Day!! But for convenience, the Commonwealth, which inaugurated the day as “Armistice Day” back in 1918 when …ah well, an armistice was declared to end WWII – decided to celebrate it on Sunday. Which happens to be a Sunday. So across the country, Officials have been solemnly laying wreaths to remember our fallen soldiers of WWI.
But, your Eyewitness has a different take on the whole affair. First of all, those of our forbears from the colonies – more than 3 million soldiers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean – who fought in WWII did so when we weren’t even granted the franchise!! We were judged by Britain as not competent enough to choose a government – but competent enough to fight her arch rival Germany!! While we must mourn our deaths – there’s no reason to CELEBRATE the Armistice.
After all, our rice exports to the West Indies was established because of the war!!
…in Cricket
Your Eyewitness had expected to see an India vs Pakistan final in this years T-20 World Cup. But India Choked and England beat Pakistan to win it all.
They’re now both T-20 and ODI Champs. Congrats!!
