…on Caricom?
What is it with this administration and “showpiece” projects? Does it really believe it can deliver the “good life” it promised with smoke and mirrors? And that’s all it’s been doing when you think about it – even though the bottom has dropped out of the economy and we’re all in freefall. Landing’s gonna be a bi*ch when the proverbial poop hits the fan – a lotta folks gonna be really messed up. Pun intended!
We’ve already gone through the Jubilee Bash where it’s not only the naysayers complained the Government “hang dey hat where dey hand cyaan reach”. Their partisans are suggesting the ill-conceived and even “iller” executed projects might’ve done more harm than good. Especially towards the “national cohesion” that’s so needed to get everyone to put their shoulders to the wheel for national development.
Now we hear about the widening and makeover of Carifesta Ave into a boulevard – “Avenue of the Caribbean” – to rival the Champs Èlysées in Paris. This is the famous boulevard where France conducts its annual military parade. It’s also home to some of the most famous eateries in the world, but took a couple of centuries to create. Guyana’s trying to have ours ready in a month! A widened span and a median with lights are only the beginning!
As former British subjects and heir to their scorn for the “frogs”, maybe we don’t think much of the technical prowess of the French, but condensing 200 years of effort into one month?? Then there’s the why? Why spend $180M (back in March they said $138M) on a half-mile road + another like sum towards removing the utility poles and underground cables? And why the Central Government monies for a city road? It’s not as if the present condition of Carifesta Ave embarrassed us during Jubilee 2016 or it can’t handle the traffic for the next fifty years.
Camp Rd is the main feeder into Carifesta Ave…and since it is clogged up beyond belief within two blocks, there certainly isn’t going to be humongous amounts of traffic suddenly apparating! But none of this is relevant, is it? The purpose is just to impress the folks from Caricom who’ll be coming for their annual Heads of Government (HoG) meeting come July 4th.
Haven’t we done enough for Caricom in giving them land and a Headquarters over on East Coast? What does this Ave of the Caribbean – which isn’t connected directly to Caricom HQ – do for Caribbean unity.
Wouldn’t using the $200M to build a shopping mall for those displaced vendors battling the elements do more for OUR “social cohesion”?
…or feeding the fat cats?
In a judgement seemingly worthy of Solomon, the City Council split the contract for installing parking meters in Georgetown. You readers who keep up with the news (your Eyewitness is paid to do this, thank you) would remember the contract was awarded to one company –- without the botheration of tenders or such humbugs – a couple of weeks ago.
Then the rep of another company indignantly pointed out he’d been given a “signed, sealed and delivered” contract back in 2007 and what about the “sanctity of contract” principle that’s supposed to guide us? More to the point, he pointed out there were legal implications of such contracts and this must’ve wonderfully focused the attention of the City Hall mandarins!
But isn’t there supposed to be a new dispensation ushered in with the “first holding of Local Government Elections in 23 years”?
That’ll ensure, among other things, the “contract splitting” doesn’t split most of the funding into the wrong pockets!!
…on getting high?
The Caribbean’s famous for its ganja…which unfortunately is illegal. So up comes this rice miller of Surinamese origin who wants to plant “industrial” ganja – which simply has a lower concentration of the THC that gives us the “high”.
So who’ll smoke the weed to monitor the real stuff from the harmless?
