The Noise Monitor and the Portrait: When Government Agencies Become Political Props

BY: Hem Kumar                               

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

There is something deeply telling about the way governments reveal their true priorities — not in their budgets, not in their legislation, but in their posters.

The Environmental Protection Agency of Guyana, in partnership with the National Data Management Authority, recently announced the launch of a pilot noise monitoring and public warning system at Kitty Seawall. The technology itself — sensors that detect excessive noise levels in real time and trigger a public LED display warning — is, in principle, a sensible application of modern infrastructure to a longstanding civic irritant. Noise pollution is real. Its effects on health, community wellbeing, and quality of life are well-documented. A government agency deploying smart technology to address it deserves, at minimum, a fair hearing.

But then you look at the poster.

And when you look at the poster carefully — really carefully — something shifts. Because what the EPA and NDMA have produced is not a public information notice. It is not a civic announcement. It is not even a competent piece of government communication. What it is, stripped of its technical language and its official logos, is a campaign flyer. A political branding exercise. A taxpayer-funded advertisement for the presidency of Mohammed Irfaan Ali — delivered under the cover of environmental regulation.

The Portrait Problem

Let us be precise about what the poster actually contains, because precision matters here.

The announcement dedicates significant visual real estate — arguably the most emotionally arresting section of the entire design — to a full portrait photograph of President Ali, formally dressed, smiling, positioned against the Guyanese national flag. Beside him, in bold type, he is identified as “His Excellency President Mohammed Irfaan Ali.” Below that, a pull quote attributed to him reads: “Building a modern, resilient and technology-driven Guyana that works for every citizen.” Above the portrait, in italicised text, the poster states that the project is “Guided by the leadership and vision of His Excellency President Mohammed Irfaan Ali.”

None of that is necessary to inform the public about a noise monitoring pilot at Kitty Seawall.

Not a single word of it.

A member of the public who wants to know what the system does, where it is located, what noise thresholds trigger an alert, or what enforcement action follows does not need to know whose vision inspired the pole. They do not need a presidential portrait. They do not need an attributed quote about resilience and technology. What they need is practical civic information — and that, notably, the poster provides only in the most skeletal terms before pivoting back to political imagery.
This is not an oversight. It is a choice. And it is a choice that tells us far more about how this administration uses state institutions than any press conference ever could.

Agencies Are Not Surrogates

The Environmental Protection Agency exists to regulate, monitor, and enforce environmental standards on behalf of the Guyanese public. It draws its budget from the public purse. Its mandate is derived from statute, not from the preferences of any sitting president. When it produces public communications, those communications are — in the most literal legal and democratic sense — public property paid for by public money.

Using that platform to promote a political figure is an abuse of institutional function. It does not matter that the president is the head of state. It does not matter that the project may have received executive support or policy direction. What matters is that a regulatory agency has allowed itself to become an instrument of political image-making — and in doing so, has compromised the very institutional credibility it depends on to do its job.

Enforcement agencies only work when the public believes they are neutral. When the EPA arrives at your business to issue a noise violation, the legitimacy of that action rests on the assumption that the agency is acting on the law, not on political instruction. The moment an agency begins visually associating itself with a political figure — the moment it starts attributing its own regulatory functions to the leader’s “vision” — that neutrality corrodes. And once institutional credibility corrodes, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

The Pattern Is the Problem

This would be easier to dismiss if it were an isolated incident. It is not.

The personalisation of state functions around the presidency has become a defining feature of how this administration presents its governance. Infrastructure projects, social programmes, technology initiatives — they arrive in the public domain not as the work of institutions, but as expressions of presidential vision, presidential leadership, presidential generosity. The individual displaces the institution at every turn.

This matters because democratic governance is supposed to work the other way around. The institution is supposed to be larger than the individual. The EPA is supposed to outlast any president. The NDMA is supposed to serve successive administrations without becoming identified with any one of them. When agencies begin producing materials that fuse their institutional identity with the political identity of the current head of state, they are not strengthening governance. They are weakening it — by making themselves dependent on political proximity rather than public trust.

What the Poster Does Not Tell You

Beyond the politics, it is worth noting what this elaborate, visually sophisticated, officially stamped poster conspicuously fails to explain.

It does not tell you what the specific decibel threshold triggers the alert. It does not explain what happens after the LED display warns that noise levels are loud — who is notified, what powers are exercised, what due process exists for a business or individual cited for a violation. It does not describe how long data is retained, who has access to it, or whether the monitoring system has any recording or surveillance capacity beyond audio levels. It does not explain how the pilot will be evaluated, what metrics determine success, or what criteria will govern the decision to expand the system to other public locations across Guyana.

These are not minor technical footnotes. They are the substance of the policy. They are the questions that determine whether this is a genuine public interest initiative or a piece of visible governance — the kind that looks active and modern in a photograph but operates without the transparency that real accountability requires.

A government serious about noise regulation would lead with that information. A government serious about public trust would make those answers easy to find. Instead, we got a presidential portrait and a slogan.

The Irony Is Deafening

There is a particular irony lodged at the heart of this episode that deserves to be named plainly.

The stated purpose of the noise monitoring system is to reduce unwanted, excessive, intrusive noise in public spaces — to protect the community from disturbance it did not ask for and cannot easily escape. The poster announcing that system is itself a form of political noise: loud, intrusive, impossible to mistake for something neutral, and entirely unrequested by the citizens it claims to serve.

The LED board on that pole at Kitty Seawall reportedly displays the words: “NOISE LEVEL LOUD. PLEASE KEEP THE AREA BELOW THE NOISE LIMIT.”

Someone at the EPA might want to read that message twice.

What Should Happen

This editorial is not an argument against noise regulation, or against technology-assisted enforcement, or even against this specific pilot project. If the system works as described, if it is governed by clear legal thresholds, and if enforcement is applied consistently and transparently, it could represent a genuine improvement in how Guyana manages shared public spaces.

But the EPA and NDMA owe the public more than a promotional poster and a presidential portrait. They owe a published framework: the legal basis for enforcement, the technical specifications of the system, the data governance policy, the complaints and appeals process, and a clear account of how the pilot will be independently evaluated before any expansion is authorised.
And they owe the public a commitment — stated clearly and upheld consistently — that government agencies in Guyana exist to serve citizens, not to serve as backdrops for political branding.
Until that commitment is demonstrated, every poster like this one is evidence of its absence.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—