Editorial

Public safety and the government’s role

In most countries (and Guyana is no exception) issues relating to “public safety” rank highly on the list of concerns for the population and the government. However, in Guyana, considerations of public safety usually centre on crime prevention, road safety and fire safety in the main. It seems that some other aspects of public safety are thought to be the responsibility of the citizens themselves, and there is no visible official monitoring of certain public spaces where safety is an issue, particularly, but not limited to the safety of children.

One critical area of child safety is the safety of children in schools where they spend the majority of their waking hours from Monday to Friday. It is not at all uncommon in Guyana to see poorly kept classrooms with faulty furniture – usually the same types of desks and benches that were in vogue many decades ago with three or more children crammed onto one bench. This kind of proximity makes for the easy transmission of communicable diseases and can also lead to disagreements which can escalate into violence.

The prevalence of unsanitary bathrooms in schools with the concomitant health risks are also a major public safety issue primarily related to children. Many classrooms also have broken or missing windows, are inadequately ventilated, and have poor lighting and electrical facilities and fire safety facilities. Schoolyards are also notoriously poorly maintained with some of the top schools having grounds overgrown with grass and bush, or at the other extreme, quite devoid of any greenery – basically just an uneven expanse of bare earth.

It is against this backdrop of a seeming lack of superintending of public safety in schools and in schoolyards and school grounds that only this September, a tragic incident occurred with the collapse of a goal post in a community centre ground which was being utilised by a particular school. A seemingly (temporarily) unsupervised six-year-old was swinging on the goal post which collapsed, fatally throwing him to the ground.

This tragic accident on a community playground was followed scarcely two months later by the drowning of a thirteen-year-old girl and her fifty-year-old uncle at Golden Creek during the Rockstone Fish Festival. The man died valiantly trying to save the teen as she encountered difficulties in the deep end of the creek that should have been off-limits to the general public. Minister of Business, Dominic Gaskin, speaking after the tragic occurrence, said that strict safety measures should have been in place