Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 12, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
There are competent and able professionals within the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). Many of them would have been dismayed and demoralized by the revelations recently that confidential information on individual taxpayers was passed to a private citizen.
When within an organization there is abrasive or unprofessional conduct, it affects professionalism at all levels. This is why it is so very important that organizations vested with gaining the public trust ensue that high levels of confidentiality are maintained.
The breach of confidentiality in the Guyana Revenue Authority would have caused great worry within the organization because many of the professionals there would have felt betrayed by the release of that information. The work of these professionals is based on respect for the confidentiality of information received.
If this goes, then professionals would begin to question whether it is worth working within the GRA. They would have been disappointed and dismayed that information which should have been privileged could have been so casually passed on via email to third parties outside of the Guyana Revenue Authority.
Some of them must now be privately questioning the very integrity of the organization to which they would have devoted so many years of their lives. They would have no doubt joined the organization with the hopes of pursuing a life-long career in a professional tax administration entity. They would have imagined a bright future ahead, one in which they could have advanced their careers, and who knows, even move on to international organizations as professionals in their own right. In other words, many of them would have harboured ambitions of pursuing careers, both inside and outside of Guyana, as professional tax administrators.
These hopes would now require some re-examination, since these professionals find themselves working for an organization which is being accused of unethical and unprofessional conduct. Can you imagine what this does to these aspiring young professionals in that body? Can you imagine what it does to the reputation of the Guyana Revenue Authority?
This is no longer an organization in which taxpayers can have great confidence that the information they provide would be treated with the strictest of confidence. This is an organization that has been exposed for sharing the turnover, the taxes paid, and the liabilities of certain firms, with third parties. This sharing shrouds the entire GRA in controversy and it must have an effect on the morale of the organization and the way the public will now relate to it. Many importers, for example, may be wondering whether their commercial invoices would have been distributed to third parties.
What must be more disconcerting to the staff of the Guyana Revenue Authority is the fact that to date, the Board of the organization has not issued a peep in relation to this matter. It is as if it is business as usual. But for professionals, it cannot be business as usual, because the issue goes to the very heart of the culture of the organization.
The professions within the GRA would have begun to question whether they are now working for a professional entity or political outfit. The two are mutually exclusive. As such, the professional staff would be concerned by the perception that the GRA is now being used to pursue political vendettas. This must be shattering to the confidence of the staff of that organization, and the longer this perception persists, the greater damage it will do to morale within.
Professionals cannot operate efficiently in an atmosphere of fear. They must be worried now about their own futures and whether they too can become victims of an oppressive culture. They too must be worried as to whether they will be respected as professionals because when politics infiltrates organizations, then political considerations often supersede meritocracy.
The professional staff of the GRA need assurances now that they will be treated as professionals, that they will be work in an institution free from fear, because there is nothing that cripples professionalism than having to be always looking over your shoulder. They must also be satisfied that the organization would be immune from overt political influence and more so, that they would not be asked to pursue political vendettas.
Listen to the man that is throwing Guyanese bright future away
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