PAY YOUR BILLS!

May 08, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Uncle Freddie has me baffled. I am confused as to how an accident can occur on top of a pothole, yet it is being alleged that the guilty party was attempting to swerve away from the pothole. I suppose there has to be some answer to this paradox, just as I am sure there must be a reason why Radika gone.
My concern today is not with Uncle Freddie or with any popular song. Rather it has to do with the use of statistics by government officials. I will begin with the President of Guyana.

In an address to persons who were allotted house plots at Parfait Harmonie, the President spoke about Guyana having had 250,000 households in addition to the 70,000 house lots that the government distributed.
Now something has to be wrong here because this would mean that at the minimum Guyana would have about 320,000 households which would give us one of the highest rates of housing per population.
It would mean that we have a household for every three persons.

Even if we assume that the 70,000 lots which the government is said to have distributed or regularized, is part of the 250,000 households, it would mean that the average household in Guyana is about three persons.
It is therefore clear that something is wrong somewhere with these numbers. If on the other hand Guyana does have 250,000 households then it would mean that most Guyanese are adequately housed and the housing stock is adequate for our small population. There will therefore be no need for any new housing schemes in Guyana and further, no need for the government to be allowing additional agricultural lands to be converted into housing areas.
At the same meeting at which the President made use of those statistics, the Minister of Housing and Water indicated that in that particular scheme some one billion dollars has been spent on roads electricity and water.

Now this may seem a lot of money and would give credence to the view that the government is using taxpayers’ monies to support the housing drive and thus the development of citizens.
However it was also reported that there are 13,000 house lots in the scheme where this one billion dollars has been spent.
Now as we know most house lots are now in excess of $100,000 and if we multiply this by 13,000 we obtain $1.3 billion, which is more than the one billion dollars that the government says it has spent to put in the infrastructure.
Thus, it would seem as if the homeowners are the ones in fact paying for the infrastructure and not the government.
The Guyana Power and Light has also been providing us with some numbers on the theft of electricity. It is said that there are some 23,000 cases of identified theft of current and out of this eight hundred have been charged but only handful convicted so far.

The option of filing charges against those guilty of electricity theft is therefore not an attractive one.
This column had long proposed that if a metered customer is found guilty of stealing electricity that person should be back billed for as much as two years and if he or she fails to pay, then there should be an option for the GPL to levy on the personal assets of the person owing the power company.
This process may take a little longer but once the GPL is able to begin to seize the personal property of those who owe the company you will be surprised at how quickly others will fall in line and loss reduction through theft by metered customers will be reduced.
The GPL is pursuing a futile campaign to try to obtain criminal indictments against those guilty of electricity theft.

They should seek to obtain instead an order allowing them to seize things such as television sets, stoves and other equipment used in households which owe the GPL large sums.
GPL should also study closely the composition of the 23,000 cases of theft. It should disaggregate those who are residing in squatting areas so as to make an assessment as to whether the problem is in those areas or is more widespread.
Once the statistics are carefully studied and analyzed, a more effective strategy other than dragging people to court, should be devised.

If needs be, the law should be changed to allow for the sums owed to our utilities to be added on to the yearly rates and taxes paid and if these sums reach in excess of a certain amount, then the properties can be forfeited by the State after a judicial process that is swift and expeditious.
Once persons in this society realise that they stand to lose their property and possessions because of their failure to pay their utility bills or because of theft of electricity, they will pay up.