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The Government of Guyana is using members of the Disciplined Services in community sanitation exercises. Village Voice earlier reported a story where former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Prime Minister Mark Philipps, was spearheading a cleanup exercise on the Mandela-Eccles highway with soldiers whilst on duty and in their uniforms.
A former high ranking military officer had expressed concerns about the misuse of the soldiers’ time and labour. He told Village Voice when the world’s geopolitics is going through a period of uncertainty the military should be focused on territorial defence not cleaning streets. Cleaning streets, he said, “is not time properly spent on the defense of the nation.”
Members of the Guyana Police Force are too cleaning the streets. This work is usually the domain of labourers. If there is a shortage of this category of workers, the government could hire or contract out the service.
Seeing the police on the streets cleaning is not sitting well with past and active members.
One such member, an active Inspector, told Village Voice whilst good policing also requires building good relations with citizens which is important in crime fighting, instead of the police cleaning streets they could be in the streets educating citizens about the law against littering
In Guyana it is an offence to deposit litter in a public place; deposit litter from a moving vehicle unto a public place; and cause or permit persons to commit offences to deposit litter in a public space or from a moving vehicle unto a public space. Person (s) found guilty of any of these offences shall be fined a sum of between $50,000 – $100,000 or face imprisonment for three months.
This year and last year the Georgetown Municipality proposed amending the Municipal and District Act, Chapter 28:01 where a person could be fined $10,000 for littering, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can penalise an individual for up to $50,000 and a corporate body can be fined $100,000.
The amendment would have seen a $10,000 fine for a first offence; $20,000 for a second offence; and a third offence no less than $35,000 but no more than $500,000. If payment of the fine remains outstanding after 72 hours, the violator would become liable to imprisonment for six months. Minister of Local and Regional Government, Mr. Nigel Dharamlall, said there will be no increase.
Cleaning the streets is seen as a misused of the police time as it was for the soldiers. It is also seen as an act of public humiliation.
A retired sergeant said the police can set a good example on cleanliness by keeping the station yards and immediate environs “spotlessly clean.”
The active duty Inspector, said the janitorial work men and women in uniform are being asked to do is an attempt to humiliate and demoralise them. According to him, if members of the Force wanted to be labourers, not but their lives on the line in service and protection to their fellow citizens, they would have found work as labourers.
“I am not against a labourer or sanitation worker because there is dignity in all honest work but what the government is doing is not intended to boost morale [but] humiliate us,” he said.
On the soldiers cleaning streets, the former military officer told Village Voice what society is seeing from the prime minister is either contentment to sit and take orders from his political bosses or he does not have any meaningful role in the Irfaan Ali administration. “Phillips should use his own military training and experience to guide the government away from the misguided role of the GDF and utilisation of the men and women in uniform,” he advised.
