Two police officers, Khurshid Sattaur and a government that lacks vision

Sep 03, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I appealed to Mr. Karan Singh, when he was the “formidable one” at Guyana Water Incorporated not to fire a sewage worker that had chalked up 35 years of service.
This man, in a country devoid of technical people, knew the Georgetown sewage system better than most GWI officers. I asked Singh what was wrong with suspension
But Singh, for reasons that is bound up with the demographic and cultural evolution of this country, wanted to fire this gentleman.
This article is not on Singh but I believe Singh, like Khurshid Sattaur at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), has set this country back by decades in a sociological area that is so dangerous, an area that threatens the very existence of Guyana.
It is for this reason, we who fought the PNC Government owe to the next generation to fight the PPP Government. I can’t openly say what I want in relation to how I see the policies of Singh when he was Genghis Khan at GWI and the other gentleman at the GRA, but I hope readers have read between the lines.
When is Khurshid Sattaur going to tell the public what discussions he had with Roger Khan’s lawyer? Those who spoke to Simels must take a lie detector test.
I did not meet with Simels alone. Kaieteur News personnel were present, including its publisher, but I will still take the test. I am also insisting that Sattaur and I take the polygraph as to all the wealth or finance we both possess, including all assets.
The Guyana Press Association must insist that there be a comparative examination of houses – mine and many other government officials.
If the engineers conclude that I have even an upper middle class house, based on its architecture and its internal contents, then I will resign from UG and stop writing this column.
If it is not a fancy residence, the kind upper middle class and wealthy people build, then Khurshid Sattaur must resign. I am urging Sattaur to take up this challenge. In the meantime, I again call upon Khurshid Sattaur to disclose what Simels mentioned to him and what he conveyed to Simels. I now return to the story of two police officers.
One was my student, Patrice Henry. I cannot elucidate on the plight of this officer who later became a lawyer, because he has taken the Guyana Police Force and the Police Service Commission to court, but this I can say; for the time I knew him both as a police officer and a UG student, this was an impressive young man that the police force should be happy to have as an attorney working as a superintendent with the force. Why did he have to resort to court action to retain his job?
We move from Patrice Henry to another police superintendent, Simon Mc Bean. Mc Bean’s dilemma hasn’t reached the court as yet so there is still time for a comment.
Let us assume that Mc Bean did evade some procedures for finishing his scholarship in London. He returned to serve his country – one in a million. In a land where such skills as those which Mc Bean acquired are scarce, is there no other way to deal with the petty sin of Mc Bean (assuming that he committed one) but by dismissal?
The last person in the police force that should support dismissal for minor error is the Commissioner. Mr. Henry Greene knows that we go back to Wortmanville, so I guess we know a little bit of each other.
The people in authority have become so jaded that our bureaucracy and governmental structures operate without commonsense. Take the Education Minister. He announced that he is seeking a change in law to increase the retirement age of teachers.
This is coming from the Minister of a country where the shortage of teachers is one of the worst in the world. Why the change was not made a decade ago? In which country in the year 2009, the public service retires employees with university degrees and other specialist education at 55?
No one at the dinner hosted by the Private Sector Commission where the President gave the featured address had the courage to tell the President that Guyana remains backward because we retire our university trained teachers, soldiers, police officers and public sector technicians at 55, and they take their education and give it to richer countries.
Then we beg those very countries for skills to fill the gap and they send young volunteers who come for sun and fun. I guess Naipaul was right – mimic men rule the Caribbean.

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