For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven…a time to tear down and a time to build up…Ecclesiastes 3:1-3. The time to tear down is upon the high powers at Freedom House; the time to build may be too late, but a new fire Station to serve the Capital and its environs is urgently needed.
Neither present nor past governments realized the horrible location of Georgetown’s main firefighting unit, a nightmare for fire trucks to maneuver through both pedestrian and traffic if only to exit its location and drive onto a main road. This backward location, at the edge of the city instead of a central position reflects the clumsiness, poor planning and lack of future provisions in a growing capital. It is worthwhile mentioning that Georgetown’s population has outgrown its water supply, while its vehicles, along with incoming traffic, can hardly move on the outdated roadways.
Back to the new fire station. Having spent huge amounts of taxpayers’ dollars on vehicles and equipment one wonders why the performance of the fire service in wake of the Brickdam Police Station fire was so pathetic. Well the old adage explicitly states: no matter how much money you spend on your children’s education, if they don’t want to learn they will remain dunce. The PPP gov’t has certainly, and rather ironically, been handed a golden opportunity to give the public their money’s worth in a new central fire station. The time is now (if not now, when?) to construct an updated facility. It is time to get rid of that idiotic, huge waste of over a billion dollars Guyanese taxpayers’ money; it is time to relegate Durban Park stadium to the garbage heap or gainfully used as firewood and replace that eyesore with a modern fire station.
Leyland Chitlall Roopnaraine
New York