We are lost in an area of darkness

Jun 06, 2009 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
We are living in an age of advanced technology; an age of cell phones, television, internet, computer, iPods, DVD players and an unending list of contemporary inventions that stimulate the intellect and challenge the mind.
I can carry thousands of words and documents on my flash drive, actually a whole library in my laptop computer.

I seem to have forgotten to handwrite a letter since the invention of the computer and advent of the internet.
All these modern inventions I have listed above, built by the scientific minds of advanced men, are of no use to me now, because I am living in a country I call, ‘An Area of Darkness’’ – plagued by frequent blackouts every day. In the middle of preaching a sermon in my church with foreign guests, I am hit suddenly by a blackout – our members running helter-skelter for a lamp or candles to light.
My foreign guests are at a loss for words, having now visited a nation seemingly one million years behind civilization.
The emergency ward at GPHC is sometimes hit by sudden blackouts; we know the dire possibilities in such a situation.

While visiting a government office in Georgetown, travelling all the way from Berbice for a very important document, a sudden blackout changes the day of a Berbician, because he/she is told he/she cannot be assisted due to an absence of power.
While driving from Berbice to Georgetown, a sudden blackout strikes on a road that’s already a dark pit of hell – many vehicles are brought to an abrupt halt, while some are run into trenches because their relatively inadequate headlights cannot direct a proper path for the panicking drivers.
As residents depend on GWI for water once a day (or once a week in my case), we now have to depend on the mercy of the rains, because frequent power failures consequently ‘kill’ the pipelines, yet water bills are climbing higher and higher.
In the midst of students studying right now for the C.X.C. exams, power outages are making a mess of that important process, thus creating more failures in our society.
Our roads, where lots of stray animals roam, are pitch black at nights, no wonder our accident rate is higher than most countries.

In this age of modern technology we have fallen from grace like Lucifer, all because of bad administration. Yet many of our Ministers in Government are advocating tourism in Guyana, a land of brazen thieves and robbers who can benefit now by invading our homes in the dark, and rob us, unimpeded, in the streets.
While many are suffering in the dark with bottle lamps and cannot even afford kerosene for their lamps, many of our leaders’ homes are very bright, because they are well fortified with powerful generators. But the poor man has to suffer. Many selling fish and meat in the markets are suffering thousands of dollars in losses because of ‘Mr. Blackout’.

The fluctuation of voltage is also creating millions of dollars in damage in homes. Who is compensating these people for their losses?
All this, yet GPL bills are climbing every month and the company’s disconnection teams are very active, sometimes even when bills have been paid.
In my travels to different nations, I have not seen blackouts and high crime like I see here.
What have we really achieved after 43 years of Independence? Under British rule, Guyana was better off, and I believe, still would have been prosperous today. In my opinion, our leaders have failed us because they are very far from God.

Many of our citizens are being humiliated and/or brutalized in Barbados, yet they don’t want to come back home. Why? It’s because they cannot find jobs and they are fed up with no electricity, no water, no good housing, poor salaries, and eroding moral and social standards of living in what has been reduced to a donkey-cart economy.
Our valued citizens are leaving every day, thus draining the social and public sectors. All our skilled people are running away. It’s all because of bad administration and we seem to be getting worse.
What we need is a ‘National Front’ or an all-inclusive government, where members of every party work together, along with NGO’s and Religious Organizations, to rebuild and re-administrate this beleaguered nation. We need to pay our workers more decent salaries so they will stay and work to build this country and not run away to build another man’s country.

The money we earn can barely feed and clothe us, and pay the bills. It is virtually impossible for the average worker to save money in the bank. The VAT is chasing more people out of Guyana. How can we tax our people 16% and raise their salary 6%? What kind of accounts is that?
A good government must have love and concern for every citizen. I have seen governments like Suriname giving every child born into that nation, an amount of money for their education every month – even helping parents to find jobs and cheap housing.
In Holland, parents are also helped by the Government, and this is what happens in many more nations around the world. Here, I have only seen the rich getting richer and the poor man moving from bad to worse.
For us to prosper we must repent before God and look to God in prayer for direction. Guyana is too young to die. We are drifting away like dry leaves in a turbulent ocean; lost in an area of darkness.
Rev. Gideon Cecil

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