Dear Editor,
American economist, entrepreneur, and university professor Carl J. Schramm defines a failing city as one that can never expect to return to its former prosperity. He must have been referring to Georgetown, the capital of Guyana.
Where else in the world could a municipality owe two contractors more than 0 million for garbage collection services provided over the last two years, and refuse to pay them but expect them to continue working nonetheless?
And worse, when they decide to make a payment to these contractors, they do so with rubber cheques that could not be processed because the Council had non-sufficient funds (NSF).
To add insult to injury, they then hire an additional contractor, who lacks the tools, equipment and human resource capacity to do the job, in order to create more debt.
Where else in the world would a bankrupt municipality rent scores of plastic portable toilets at more than eighty-two thousand dollars, and subsequently more than ninety thousand dollars per month each, rather than buying their own, or building permanent public conveniences?
Where else in the world would the only abattoir in the capital city — supposed to ensure that best practices in food hygiene and meat production are maintained — be in such an unclean, decrepit state, and where the animals are bludgeoned to death in such a barbaric manner?
Where else in the world would a group of engineers and administrators just sit idly by and watch and dwell in the historic edifice of a City Hall that is crumbling without their doing the slightest of remedial work to save it from falling apart?
Georgetown is a failed city that is doing its best to take the country down the toilet — and I don’t mean the ,000 per month portable toilets — with it.
Sincerely,
Jermain Johnson
