Governmental Entropy

Nov 20, 2009 Editorial

It is propounded as a general law of science that the universe as a whole is tending towards a greater state of entropy. In our laymen’s terms it simply means that notwithstanding all the complex structures we see at the micro, human and macro levels, everything will end up as chaos and degradation.
While scientists conceptualise this state of general disorder as occurring far into the unimaginable future, it does appear that in Guyana, the property of the people of Guyana – that is, “Government’s property” – achieves it within a decade of being constructed.
Look around you – schools, post offices, Ministries, stellings – you name it and if it is more than a decade old (and one is being kind here) and it belongs to the Government, it is run down. One may retort that the general neglect is simply a case of when everybody is responsible (the Government) then no one is responsible and nature takes its course.
But this is not the case everywhere. Government buildings in the developed nations are invariably spic and span. They may be a bit dull in their aesthetics, but they are well kept. And herein, perchance, lays a clue as to why the law of entropy appears to work at light-speed in Guyana. The habit of taking care of the people’s property, maintenance, if you will, may not be unrelated to the taking care of “development” writ large.
Governments in the “underdeveloped” countries routinely complain about the factors outside of their control – weather, resources, diseases, etc. – that prevents them from achieving all the goals they just as routinely announced on the hustings. But the fact of the matter is that Government buildings are most certainly under the direct and total control of the Government. So why the seemingly inevitable decrepitude in our jurisdiction? Our own Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul has been very scathing out our inability in the Caribbean to keep out the “bush” with the departure of the white man and even those who resent his gibes, have to concede the truth of his observation.
It appears that our leaders focus too much on the grand gestures and spend too little time taking care of what is directly and literally in their hands. We believe that what goes on (or more accurately, what does not go on) inside those Government buildings is directly related to the general degradation of the buildings themselves. No one can be motivated by a leader or boss who is willing to work under such conditions.
How does the leader expect the government worker to go off to fix the country when his or her experience is that the leader is satisfied with his surroundings falling into the ground? But the apathy is not confined only to the Executive branch. Has anyone visited a courthouse recently? The law is supposed to be blind but do the structures in which it is dispensed supposed to be so decrepit?
But the entropy can be reversed. There are some islands of order among the government’s forlorn real estate that prove conclusively the job can be done. Take the Demerara Harbour Bridge, for instance. This was built in 1978 and was given a lifespan of twenty-five years. Long before that time was up, most of us had given up on the bridge as we saw sections of it float towards the Atlantic Ocean. But all that was turned around under the new administration. Then the rot was allowed to literally creep in again until the President happened to cross the bridge one day and raised all kinds of hell. Today the Bridge now – is literally shining and looks like it will go for another twenty-five years at least.
But it should not have to take Presidential interventions to fix public structures. All it demands is a regime willing to enforce a disciplined programme of maintenance. While we might have thrown out the colonial power, we did not have to discard the mundane but effective programs they instituted. We suggest that they simply dig out the old manuals. Hopefully we will not only reverse the tendency towards greater entropy in our buildings, but maybe also in our fortunes.

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