Municipal administrators destroying their legacy

Dear Editor,
Something has to be considerably wrong at the Georgetown City Council, and it needs to be fixed urgently. Just about two years ago, the Town Clerk and a team descended upon and demolished a premise owned by an elderly gentleman known as ‘Rasta Man’. The premise was popularly known as the “Dread Shop”, situated at ‘A’ Water Street, Russell Square, Stabroek Market.
This act of destroying the structure was brutally done, even though the property was the subject of a matter engaging the attention of the court; and consequently, this action was considered by many legal luminaries to be unlawful and a show of complete disrespect and disregard for the Court of Appeal of Guyana.
What was most egregious was the fact that the Council had granted permission and leased the said property to ‘Rasta Man’ for more than three decades, and had continuously levied rates and taxes and charged cleansing fees for the occupation of this location, even though the Ministry of Public Infrastructure had claimed jurisdiction over the area upon which the Dread Shop sat. Yet still, without warning, they demolished the property.
Having committed this act of unnecessary savagery, one expected that the area would have been kept clear and clean, or the Dread Shop’s replacement would have been some aesthetically pleasing edifice. But alas! No such thing.

Instead, what we have now in its place is an ugly, unhealthy, unsafe, unkempt tent city. Sprung up there over the last two years has been a squalid, shanty facility that is teeming with illegal activities and is a complete eyesore to foreign and local visitors to the downtown area. As the boys would say, it is just ‘stink and dutty’.
When will the Georgetown Municipality understand what it takes to develop the tourism industry in Guyana? Is this how they are preparing for Guyana’s Carnival? Is this what they mean by serving the city and advancing the nation?
The downtown area of Georgetown, particularly at night, must be one of the grimiest, unsafest, disordered and lawless places in the Caribbean.
Why doesn’t this present group of councillors, who will be demitting office in another few months, not understand that all good men and women must take responsibility to create legacies that will take the next generation to a level we could only imagine? Are they going to allow a few venal municipal administrators to destroy their legacy?

Sincerely,
Laquisha Kaftans