A government that either doesn’t learn or couldn’t be bothered

Jul 17, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

We are in the year 2010. Independence came to the colonies more than fifty years ago. But how much have the power-wielders in post-colonial Guyana learned about modern management principles? It is impossible to keep young people in this country. They are not going to stay. They have seen too much administrative idiocy in their own country and they conclude that their leaders are people without commonsense.
It is really hard for a Guyanese who has visited modern nations and returned to Guyana to have any respect for those who are in charge of their homeland. Some commonsensical pathways that all modern governments follow are missing in this land.
I have been a commentator since 1988 when I first started with the Stabroek News. Since that time, I have commented four times on a piece of unbelievable stupidity from the Government of Guyana. I cannot speak with verifiable facts but it is my belief that there isn’t another government so foolish when it comes to this particular policy.
If a state agency is going to dig up the streets of Georgetown to lay water pipes underneath them, then commonsense automatically intervenes and should tell the government that you have to re-do that part that you ripped up because once you just throw back the stones and earth, the street will deteriorate badly then will be destroyed and the adjoining roads will be affected. Sadly this has been the policy of the Government of Guyana. I see it all the time.
On the UG Access Road just close to the Railway Embankment, GWI dug up the road to lay pipes. The workmen just threw back the dirt on the area after completion. The rainy season is on us, and that part of the UG access road developed a hole which has spread and has destroyed that part of the street.
It is the same idiocy on David Street. You wonder how any government can be so foolish. This is the fifth time that I have made this observation over a ten-year period. What is interesting to note is that GT&T does the same activity as GWI – dig up the streets to lay phone cables. This is a foreign company yet it takes more interest in the livelihood of Guyanese than their own government. GT&T resurfaces the parts it rips up and the street looks as it if was never touched in the first place.
Minister Robeson Benn has shown annoyance over a number of my columns that relate to his work but the facts are there to be seen like the perennial grass. Last year, I did a column about a terrible smash up on UG Access Road a few yards going south from the Gaffoor gated complex. There is a huge crater in the middle of the road. The road is falling in because it is over a small trench.
A minibus swung away from the crater and ran into a family of a UG student. It is a year now and her father still cannot walk without crutches. Daily, I see how the vehicles are swinging away from that crater onto the pathway of other drivers. Another tragedy is waiting to happen. It is not if but when.
Take parking facilities. This is not an idea that the Government of Guyana has shown any interest in. The people who preside over the affairs of this country show no nationalist concern for the nation. I have lived next to the NIS for over twenty years and to this day, the NIS has not landscaped the parapet on Winter Place for parking facilities. When it rains Winter Place is a muddy pond.
The exact picture appears on Vlissengen Road where GWI is located. There is no place for parking outside GWI. It is not that the landscaping cannot be done so customers could be accommodated; the truth is that the authorities just couldn’t be bothered.
Go to any Ministry and see if there are parking slots for customers or visitors. How much money it will take to landscape the exterior parapet to accommodate vehicles outside these buildings?
Contrast this with the private sector and the Government looks silly. Republic Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Buddy’s Pool Hall, just to name a few, are all private businesses which cater for the facilities of their customers.
When you write about the primitive instincts of those who are in charge of the public realm in this country, you become an automatic enemy. The tragedy goes on!

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