Latest update May 12th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 01, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
A Happy New Year to all my readers! The more you travel outside of Guyana, the more you live in foreign lands, the greater perspective you have as to why this country is retarding.
And perhaps the greatest reason is that we are constraining ourselves with too much pettiness and small-mindedness. We have to learn to move forward in this country and not be detained by foolishness and fickleness. This country is being held back by persons holding on to petty hurts and bearing malice over small inconsequential matters; it is being detained by leaders having to attend to small, mundane things that would better be handled by juniors.
I will give two examples and show how these have affected things in Guyana. The first is the well known attack on the Kaieteur News and the suggestion that businesses encourage fabrication of the news when they advertise in this newspaper.
Now Kaieteur News is an outstanding newspaper. It is in fact the leading daily newspaper in Guyana, with the widest readership.
Its reporting of certain matters has no doubt attracted the ire of the ruling administration, but all newspapers from time to time get on the wrong side of others and this has less to do with the truth and more about the way in which people deal with criticism.
Kaieteur News is not an anti-government newspaper. Kaieteur News is simply doing its job in keeping with its credo to keep the public informed.
From time to time such information will make persons uncomfortable, but for certain leaders to take such umbrage at this newspaper’s reporting, is to detain oneself unnecessarily.
Public officials have to be thick-skinned. More importantly, they have to accept criticism as something that is not only natural, but also helpful, as a form of feedback. They do not have to agree with what was said but they must in respecting the rights of others, not allow these matters to become so irritating that it forces them to make ill-considered statements.
This country has a great deal of problems. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done and therefore we cannot be wasting time in this country with petty squabbles. We need to move forward and to get the wheels of industry and commerce rolling in the country, rather than every single day having to deal with things which only take up valuable time and energy.
The second issue concerns a meeting that was held recently by the Minister of Agriculture with farmers concerning irrigation during this extended dry season. Now it seems that in this country, ministers have to be going around the country doing things that in the past would have been carried out by junior officials.
Why does a minister of the government have to go and speak to farmers about the need for prudent use of water during this dry season? This could have been done by some other official of the Ministry of Agriculture, leaving the minister to concentrate on the more important things at hand.
We have developed a strange tendency in this country, whereby ministers of the government have to appear to deal with the most inconsequential of things such as sharing out seeds and water drums. These things should be left to underlings. They should be, in management parlance, be left to underlings.
A few days ago I saw the Minister of Housing and Water informing the nation that water bill collections had improved by fifteen per cent. He did not state the rate of increase of additional billing.
Thus it is difficult to determine, from what was reported, whether the increased billing was mainly attributed to additional billing, or whether the rate of increase of collections outstrips the rate of additional billing.
These things about billings would however be better reported on by the top officials of the water utility, leaving the minister to deal with more strategic and policy announcements within the sector.
This country has a great many problems. There are a great many things to be fixed. We have not even yet begun to deal with the question of how to deal with the increasing build-up of rural home waste. We do not have in this country a facility to process sewage into byproducts such as fertilizers. There are a great many things to be done and therefore what is needed is for greater delegation rather than increased centralization; and this also goes for decision-making.
For the New Year, let a thousand problems bloom but also let a thousand hands be involved in shooting these problems down. Let us put our nation to work. Let us get everyone involved in coming up with plans and solutions to the many ills of our society.
Also, let us stop detaining ourselves with minor nonsense. Guyana has to move forward. This is my wish for the New Year.
Listen how to run an oil country
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