Some ministries closed early on Holy Thursday

One of my colleagues told me that he went to the Central Housing and Planning Authority on 28th March to look after an urgent matter and arrived at approximately 1.30 pm but was told by the security guard that the agency was closed for business since around 1200 noon for a “function.” My colleague tried to get some more information but could not, however, he told me that he looked around to see if any Notice was posted advising of this closure but did not find any. He also told me that someone else arrived a little after seemingly from the upper East Coast and that person was irate having spent money to come with a taxi only to find this most important Government Agency closed.

I learnt also from another reliable source that the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs was closed for public business sometime after 130 pm on said day Holy Thursday and this person told me that because his purpose of going there was frustrated that he will have to stay in Georgetown at great cost and loss of time to complete what he had to get done.

Editor after learning of these two premature closures of Government offices I decided to do some checks on some Facebook pages and found out from a news agency that the Ministry of Health was also not opened for business until regular closure time of 4 pm.

I am shocked to learn of this situation and I am asking through your esteemed newspaper to find out what were the reasons for these incidents of premature closure at a time when Government agencies should be serving the Public as they are paid to do until 4 pm particularly in the circumstances where we have two public holidays related to Easter, that is, Good Friday and Easter Monday. Mr. President we already have a lot of taxpayers’ money being wasted at government offices with staff reporting at 830 am and taking long lunches and frequent time off. We the taxpayers demand that this type of delinquency be arrested immediately.

I also ask through your news medium if other Ministries were closed early as well.

Finally, the Government and the Opposition should note that this country is a secular Republic and Christian observances cannot take precedence over any other. I wonder if a Hindu Minister decides to close a ministry early for Diwali or Phagwah if this will be allowed or if a Muslim Minister shuts shop early for Eid if this will be authorized? In any case the taxpayers and general public are being short-changed.

Yours faithfully,

(Name and address supplied)

into a piece that could be lifted by crane onto a barge and brought to the nearby Tradepoint Atlantic site at Sparrows Point.

"This will eventually allow us to open up a temporary restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse," Moore said.

He declined to provide a timeline for this portion of the clearance work. "It's not going to take hours," he said. "It's not going to take days, but once we complete this phase of the work, we can move more tugs and more barges and more boats into the area to accelerate our recovery."

Workers will not yet attempt to remove a crumpled part of the bridge's superstructure that is resting on the bow of the Dali, the 984-foot Singapore-flagged container ship that brought down the bridge. Moore said it was unclear when the ship could be moved, but said that its hull, while damaged, is "intact."

"This is a remarkably complex operation," Moore said of the effort to clear bridge debris and open the Port of Baltimore to shipping traffic.

The bodies of two workers who were repairing the bridge deck at the time of the disaster have been recovered, but Moore said efforts to recover four others presumed dead remain suspended because conditions are too dangerous for divers to work amid too much debris.

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath told reporters that teams from the Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy's salvage arm and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the debris from the Patapsco River's deep-draft shipping channel would have to be removed before the Dali could be moved.

Saturday's operation involves cutting a piece just north of that channel and lifting it with a 160-ton marine crane onto a barge. A larger, 1,000-ton crane also is at the bridge site.

The piece will be brought to Tradepoint Atlantic, the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Mill which is being developed into a distribution center for companies including Amazon.com AMZN.O, Home Depot HD.N and Volkswagen VOWG_p.DE. The facility's port, which sits on the Chesapeake Bay side of the collapsed bridge, is fully operational.

Tradepoint Atlantic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the company's role in the salvage operation.