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Jul 15, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
If you take the numbers that use public bureaucracy in Guyana, then in terms of volume of work, this country’s active population is under 200,000. We have slightly over 750,000 humans in our demography. But those numbers mask a deception. That is not the figure that uses the service of the State. A huge slice of our population consists of children and young people who have absolutely no connection with public bureaucracy.
This large group is not NIS contributors. They do not use the services of the Guyana Revenue Authority, Central Housing and Planning Agency, the Deeds Registry, the various ministries (especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the police force, the University of Guyana etc. This group, because of the age factor, has no reason to seek the involvement of the public bureaucracy in their lives.
The point is that State services in Guyana impact directly on a small number of people comparatively speaking. And by comparison, I am not talking about a country like Trinidad, where the population is over a million, but under two million. I am referring to lands with millions and millions of people, like EU countries, African and Asian nations and Latin American states. If Guyana’s public bureaucracy that attends to about 200,000 souls cannot achieve competence and is forever mired in confusion, breakdown and dysfunction, then how do these very populated territories cope?
The answer is that they cope because they are not psychically destroyed nations. Guyana is. A friend of mine who is a Georgetown City Councillor and a legal assistant in the Prime Minister’s Office, returned this week from a one-month training stint in China.
“The first thing I asked him was if he had to wait at the airport in China for someone to pick him. He was laughing at my question. This guy is totally enthralled with China. He said it was service that was unbelievable. He told me he arrived in Guyana without his phone. Contacts were made with China. They found the phone and it has been posted to Guyana.
Let us return to the 200,000 persons that public bureaucracy serves in Guyana. Two weeks ago, this gentleman returned at my gate. This was twice in three months. His complaint was heart-breaking. On this occasion he brought his wife. In a country like the US with over 300 million, India with over a billion and China with over a billion, what this man was being denied, he would have easily received in less than days.
This gentleman only wanted an additional stamp on his driver’s licence that empowers him to drive a bus, because he bought a bus to earn an income. And guess what? He turned up at the Kaieteur News offices, too, with his complaint. This was a service he is entitled to, and it would take minutes to check the records.
When I saw the look on the faces of this man and his wife, I know I am not going to continue for too long as a media operative. I do not want to grow older having to see this angst in others while it grows in me too. I know my country is a failed state and I want to block out Guyana from my mental structure and just live out my years in soulful tranquility.
In a country where public bureaucracy serves about 200,000 citizens, over 200 million dollars are owed to small contractors (see my column – “Different Politicians, Same Mentality,” KN, July 7, 2016) for the construction of D’Urban Park. When this paper asked the project director, Larry London, he said the people cannot get paid as yet because of “paperwork.”
What is meant by “paperwork”? That is a fiction. There is no such thing as paperwork being responsible for people not being paid. The explanation is psychic destruction. This country’s psychology ceased to function after Burnham descended into an authoritarian chasm. The twelve years of Jagdeo’s rule viciously lacerated the psyche of this nation. Leadership and bureaucracy in this country have become irrational and dysfunctional.
I worked at UG for 26 years. With 4,500 students and 500 staff, UG is one of the world’s least populated universities, yet people get paid for work done months later. Students get grades and transcripts months after they apply for them. It is not paperwork. At such a small university what is paperwork?
The explanation is the psychic destruction of a nation. The Carifesta Secretariat is still to pay small business people for goods and services supplied eight years ago. Do you think that was because of paperwork?
GRA catch EXXON trying to hunch GUYANA over 11 BUS dollars in one shot!!!!
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