Death of Navindra Mahes 

As President Ali and his government continually play up the image of Guyana on the international stage they really need to come to grips with the brute reality of daily living – and dying – in Guyana. The death of 15-year-old Navindra Mahes of Le Ressouvenir at a pedestrian crossing on Monday underlines three of the chronic problems facing the country with many others in tow. The widowed mother of Navindra, Jennifer Arjun has had a difficult time keeping her family together. Having lost her husband, the cost of living became a severe burden for Ms Arjun. This at some point required her to have other family members temporarily look after Navindra while she tried to take care of her daughter. Those types of enforced separation pile stress on all involved: the mother, the children and the other family members. When he was sworn in on September 7th, nearly two months ago, President Ali vowed to address the impoverishment of families whose tribulations have been chronicled week after week in this newspaper’s cost-of-living series. The President said: “As I have said before, Guyana must never again be a country rich in resources but poor in living standards. We will also launch a national crusade against poverty itself. Not just the visible poverty in our streets, but the structural roots and hidden burdens that keep families from rising. We will fight it, reduce it, and ultimately eradicate it. “The key to delivering on these commitments lies in building a highly efficient, service-oriented public service, one that places the citizen at the centre of every action. We will dismantle the bottlenecks that frustrate citizens, cut away the red tape that slows delivery, and modernise the systems that too often stand in the way of progress. We will refashion a public service that delivers more online services, works for the people, responds with urgency, and executes with excellence. Because only then can the promise of development be fully realized”. Aside from the unfortunate use of the word crusade, there has been no sign of the President living up to this commitment even if it was to say that such a programme needed to be funded from next year’s budget. Each day of delay while this government and its functionaries spend on overseas junkets is another day of pain for the impecunious. Some of the leaders in the President’s presence at the 9th Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia last week might be flummoxed at the penury that is still to be recognized here and tackled in a structured manner. Another chronic issue highlighted by Navindra’s death is the ongoing carnage on the roads and the chaos in traffic management. For the five years of President Ali’s first term in office, the traffic situation on the East Coast of Demerara grew progressively worse, a result of no policy on the importation of gasolene-fuelled vehicles, the terror of monster trucks, the collapse of bridges and the higgledy-piggledy contracting and execution of road works. This has also seen poor or no road signage, construction material in the way of traffic, no lighting of roadways at night and gridlocked traffic among other abominations. The failure by the government to manage East Coast traffic, as remains the case on the East Bank, inspired counterintuitive measures such as transforming lanes intended solely for east to west traffic into west to east traffic, leading to endless problems. It was at one such switch that Navindra died. That the driver at the wheel was a policewoman underscores that third ongoing foundering of the government: the lawlessness in the police force. Following the death of the child, the police force ended the third lane going east to west in the morning which was itself a kneejerk reaction. The evidence is replete that not only has the police force failed to rein in traffic lawlessness despite the outlays on traffic cameras, body cameras, higher pay etc but policemen and women at the wheel are just as lawless as those that they seek to control. In accountable societies there would have been substantial personnel changes and policy rethinks in light of the ongoing slaughter on the road. There is no evidence of this and into his second term the scrutiny has to now be on President Ali. Since he was unable to significantly address these problems between 2020 and 2025 radical action is needed and he is the one who must deliver.