Tourism and the city
PEEPING TOM
Kaieteur News
July 6, 2004
With sugar about to lose some of its sweetness, Guyana must seek alternatives to compensate for the shortfall in foreign exchange earnings, which is likely to be in the vicinity of US$30 million per year or about $6 billion. Where is this sum likely to come from in the absence of significant expansion in exports?
The most logical choice would seem to be from tourism. I see great possibilities for Guyana doing well in tourism and tourist arrivals. But for more tourist arrivals, Guyana and specially Georgetown, need to get their act together.
A friend of mine came to Guyana recently and was struck by how much things had changed. The old neighbourhood in which he grew up had been totally transformed and he hardly knew anyone from the area. So, for him there was not much reminiscing.
While he enjoyed his brief stay, he kept commenting on how dirty and unorganized the city was, quite unlike the well laid-out system and managed city we had during the days of yore.
Everywhere he went, he said he saw unkempt parapets, stagnant drains, flees, flies, rubbish strewn all over, vagrants and traffic gone haywire.
For him, this was too much and he really did not want to be part of the city anymore. He said he wished he had booked a ticket to the interior.
According to the Ministry of Tourism, arrivals for this year are up. But even with a good year the number of arrivals are still not expected to significantly improve on the best years we have had.
The reasons for tourists not coming in greater numbers are well known: crime, political unrest, a declining economy and a filthy coastland.
Last year, we had a good December suggesting that things were turning around. However when you travel along the coast and experience the decline in services, the dirtiness and the decline in roads, drainage and other poor public works, you understand why it is that tourists may come for a visit but are not keen for a second peak a year later.
Family tourism has kept us going. Guyanese resident abroad are keen to come home to spend time with their relatives but even this comes at a price for many. While with the exchange rate, visitors find that their American dollars can really stretch while on vacation, they also find that it vanishes very quickly. In many places in Guyana, there is the presumption that the tourist has come with “a lot of dough” and there are pressing demands for him or her to “leave a raise” with even the slightest of acquaintance.
Then there is the entertaining. In no time the Yankee dollar vanishes away, making some tourists wonder whether it is worth the while coming here to vacation.
The main entertainment centres in Guyana are in the city and therefore tourists are drawn to Georgetown like a magnet, no matter where they are bunking during their stay. It is from the capital city that most of their impressions of Guyana will be drawn, and given the present state of the capital city, there is not much to be impressed about.
Georgetown is simply a stink hole at the moment. Tourists are not going to be turned on even with the busy nightlife of Sheriff Street.
The management of the city of Georgetown falls under the Mayor and City Council (M&CC). This year, the M&CC presented a $1.7B budget. This figure is becoming very repetitive in city budgets. The city’s budget seems to be permanently tagged to this sum, suggesting no real attempt to increase revenues.
But what was astonishing was the report that of this sum and given the conditions in the city, only $154M is to be spent on capital works. I am sure that I must have missed something here because it would seem extraordinary that the council should only be spending this sum on capital works.
What was even more frightening was to learn that employment costs were in the vicinity of $934 million last year.
Considering that the city no longer employs as many weeders as before, now contracts out garbage disposal, and has a significantly reduced cleaning gang, then how can a $934 million employment cost be justified.
Something is radically wrong when last year over sixty per cent of collected revenues went into employment costs at a time when so many of Council’s services are contracted out. These numbers call attention to a terminal financial and management crisis in the city, which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
Even if things were working in the city, we still could not find comfort in such high employment costs relative to revenues.
Increasing government subventions is not the answer. Any review of the contribution of Central Government to the coffers of City Council would have to first be preceded by Council justifying this high ratio of employment costs to revenue.
The Georgetown City Council will have to go back to the drawing board. But before it does that I want it to recall how the city was managed in the old days when Council was able to employ its own sanitation and cleaning gangs to service the entire city.
I want Council to consider whether it is capable of dealing with an expanded city. I want the Council to recall the days when markets were better patrolled and managed with a smaller constabulary that did not have such expanded office facilitates as are required today.
I recognize that there are new areas of responsibilities for the constabulary, but do they really need extra facilities.
There are major decisions to be made. Should not the Kitty and La Penitence markets be closed and sold off? We have a situation where on Sunday mornings, the market in Ruimveldt is more on the pubic road than in the market, which is grossly unfair to stall holders who pay their rentals for facilities within the market.
What the City Council needs are separate statutory corporations for the management of its markets and engineering departments? What the Council needs is to return to the management systems of the days of yore when it was able to employ its own cleaning and sanitation gangs.
In short the Council needs to blend the old ways of doing things with the more modern and technologically efficient ways of managing a city.