Can we achieve these things this year?

Jan 10, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

What is the relationship between the GT&T executives and the people who compile their annual directory? Do things change in this place? About seven years ago I wrote about GT&T’s inability to get its directory right. Since that time I have looked at that question several times. Each year GT&T’s contracting firm (whoever it is I do not know) gets it wrong.
There has never, and I say without fear of contradiction, never been a year since GT&T came to Guyana, that it has got its directory right. Obviously, this cannot be GT&T’s fault because it does not do its own production. But surely, for a company that like every other company has to exist on competence, then GT&T should have looked for alternatives years ago.
Last year, the book left out completely, I repeat, completely, one of Guyana’s most important institutions, UG. What kind of database is this firm using that during its compilation it forgot UG?
This is hard to fathom because UG was included in the 2006 directory which means that it was part of the existing database. How did it get lost in 2007? This is crass incompetence.
The 2008 compilation is no different from the previous years. Caribbean Airlines has no local numbers. There is an entry for Caribbean Airlines that says “reservation.” But it is also a fax number. Adam Harris and William Cox told me that if I wanted to contact Caribbean Airlines, I must go back to previous directories and check under BWIA.
I contacted Caribbean Airlines and they told me that the fault has to be with GT&T. They say they have more than one number and they should have been in the database.
I remember years ago I urged in this column that the directory replicate numbers for simplicity sake. Under the Ministry of Housing and Water, you will find Guyana Water Incorporated. Fine! No problem there. But put the same GWI under “G” so customers who do not know that GWI is subsumed under a Government’s Ministry can check under the heading, Guyana.”
In the 2008 directory, try finding “Court of Appeal.” It is impossible to locate it. I believe 99 percent of users who want a number for Court of Appeal would either look under “G” (Guyana Court of Appeal) or “C” (Court of Appeal). How could GT&T persist with such a recalcitrant performer?
Before we leave the discussion of number, why is it that the only heart institution in Guyana (Caribbean Heart Institute) does not have a listing? How can Guyana be so backward? Can we do better in 2009?
Here is a huge example of backwardness that all of us (including drivers from Essequibo, Linden and Berbice) who come to Georgetown. should take an interest in There are four streets running south to north (or north to south ) that crisscross Alberttown and Queenstown.
They are Light, Albert, Oronoque and New Garden. Either make those four streets the right-of-way or put stop signs on each of them when they meet the cross streets (those that run east to west or west to east).
But there is total confusion because you find that the stop sign is placed on one particular cross street, then at another cross street the stop marking is located on the roadway that goes from south to north. This stupidity cries out for correction.
I had a terrible argument three years ago at UG with Senior Counsel, Bernard De Santos. He told me that we should not tamper with restrictions that are long in existence because they were put there for a purpose by people who knew why they put them there.
I was livid at that explanation. I lost my temper with Mr. De Santos. What about the other side of the coin. These preventions were framed at the time by people who were drunk or sleepy or backward. Time renders them irrelevant.
The disagreement with Mr. De Santos involved a statute in the University constitution when it was framed in 1963 that prevents lecturers from defending their teaching colleagues in the trade union.
The statute only permitted non-lecturers to defend lecturers. Who made such a myopic decision in 1963?
Whichever colonial bureaucrat arranged the traffic flow in the 1950s in Georgetown, particularly in Queenstown and on Vlissengen Road had done so after leaving a party at the Georgetown Club happily inebriated.
The Police Force is yet to have the wisdom to change what time has left behind. Finally, can Republic Bank tell us why its customers have only one location in which to make ATM deposits – Camp Street? Why not at the other ATM sites? Does the Guyana Consumers Association still exist?

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