Georgetown cannot remain the stink dump it is while government continues to argue that it is serious about tourism. Once boasted to be the ‘Garden City’ with its beautifully manicured parapets and clean flowing drains and canals, Georgetown has since become the ‘Garbage City’. Unless serious work is done to tackle the obvious solid waste management problems of Georgetown and its immediate environs, then poor aesthetics will not be the only problem citizens will face; diseases will become notorious. Garbage and disease are not viable tourism products.

There are a number of factors regarding the current state of filth in which the city finds itself. From politics to an erosion of basic human decency, all serve to contribute in more ways than one to making this once beautiful city the sickening mess it is.

The political stalemate that has the City Council and the government crossing swords publicly on numerous occasions, regarding administration issues, continues to play a significant role in the city’s problems. The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is not an illegal entity in Guyana. It is a legitimate body that was elected to serve the people of Georgetown. Therefore, for the government to strong-arm this entity into submission for partisan reasons does not benefit the city and its citizens, but rather serve very narrow political purposes.

While local government reform is desperately needed, saving the city of valuable resources and openly frustrating its current administration does not serve a greater good. The rotting politics of the PPP continues to pollute the city’s administration, while garbage overflows and Georgetown stinks.

The many political issues plaguing the administration of the M&CC has in no way served the best interest of citizens. Perhaps it is time citizens rise up and demand that the PPP ends its political idiocy regarding local government reform and its vindictive approach to the M&CC. Instead of starving the M&CC of funds and refusing it of avenues to create alternative ways of earning income, the government might want to try a more strategic approach towards monitoring and evaluating the work of the council, and this does not mean imposing the burden of an Interim Management Committee (IMC); the latest preferred management concept of the PPP government.

But what about the citizens themselves, have they played a role in the current state of Georgetown? Garbage after all does not happen to find itself on the streets, parapets in drains, or piled up on Meriman’s Mall. Garbage does not place itself at the seawalls. It is people who litter wantonly in Guyana.

It is awfully disgusting to see citizens tossing empty food boxes, plastic cups, plastic bottles, paper, cigarette butts and every imaginable piece of waste out of vehicles. Citizens pay junkies to take their garbage to illegal dumpsite in communities. One such dumpsite shockingly is the Meriman’s Mall. Just drive down Light Streets between Church Streets and North Road and you will see to the eastern side of the Mall an unbelievably large accumulation of garbage. And there are many areas in and around Georgetown where garbage is just dumped indiscriminately.

Trenches and canals particularly in the Werk-en-Rust, Lodge, Albouystown, Wortmanville areas are stuffed with garbage. This garbage is dumped by people: citizens of this country.

Instead of the government engaging in spiteful retribution towards the M&CC, it could better utilize its energies towards ensuring a strategically sound, tactically achievable solid waste management policy is produced and implemented. Perhaps the new Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources might want to vigorously pursue this.

Guyana needs tough laws for littering and the protection of the environment. Running a few advertisements in the media is not enough. A more integrated communication approach is needed in order to ensure that strategic change communication takes place. This approach most likely will begin the behavioral change process that is so desperately needed. Enforceable legislation must exit.The combined opposition might want to tackle this in Parliament.   Littering must become a capital offense in Guyana!

“Keep The City Clean” must be a motto that is lived everyday by all Guyanese. It must be a call to action. It must not only be the fading piece of calligraphy barely visible on some properties of the M&CC.