Despite technology we remain backward

Jul 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

I crossed the Berbice River Bridge for the first time on Friday and I was surprised that for one, it was so short. I had grown accustomed to the mile-long Demerara Harbour Bridge where the toll was a fraction of what they now charge for the much shorter Berbice River Bridge.
As an example, a hire car would pay $50 or the equivalent of 25 US cents to cross that Demerara Harbour Bridge. A private car pays $100 or 50 US cents.
On the other hand, to cross the much shorter Berbice Bridge I must pay US$11. If I were wealthy and driving around with those Tundras and Explorers and the like I would have had to pay US$20.
In the United States bridge tolls range from three dollars to eight dollars. Glenn Lall tells me that to cross the eight-mile long San Mateo Bridge, he paid two dollars.
The argument here might be the volume of traffic but that does not mean that Guyanese who work for much less than their American counterparts must pay so much more.
I am still trying to figure out the vast difference in toll. I was told that the Berbice Bridge resulted from a private partnership with the government. The Demerara Harbour Bridge was an exclusive Government venture.  For one to charge between 10 times and 20 times more than the other is interesting. Word is that the private investors must get a sizeable return on their investment.  Meanwhile the government has waived its share of the profit.
One needs only imagine what would have been the charge had the government been collecting its money. Perhaps people would have had to swim because the government had already made the bridge a compulsory means of crossing the Berbice River. The ways of a government are most strange.
I then got to thinking about the Amaila Falls Hydro project. That too is a government-private sector partnership. If it is to go the way of the Berbice River Bridge then I can see myself paying exceedingly high electricity rates. The private investor is going to demand a sizeable rate of return on his investment.
But life is more than tolls and bridge crossings. Another thing happened on Friday. As I was headed to Berbice I got a call from a woman who was still traumatized by an episode from the day before. The story, as she told it, was that she had gone to a city bank to conduct a transaction. Her daughter accompanied her.
The woman said that as she entered her yard gunmen pounced on her, placed weapons to her head, and threatened to shoot her daughter unless she handed over what they wanted. They ended up leaving with the one million dollars that she had withdrawn for whatever reason.
She happens not to be the only one to experience a robbery after leaving a city bank with money. When these things started happening people started accusing someone inside the bank—meaning a teller or some bank employee.
They claimed that this employee would tip off friends on the outside to whom would have made substantial withdrawals and they would do this for a share of whatever money was taken.
The banks decided to take some action in this regard. They restricted the use of cellular phones in the bank. In short, they were ensuring that no one in the bank was in a position to call a friend outside to alert him or her to withdrawals of substantial amounts.
I hasten to say that technology has changed. With the Bluetooth, a person no longer needs to take out a cell phone to talk. In this way the bank staff would be none the wiser. But I am convinced that there are people who enter the bank for no other reason than to spy on withdrawals.
And this brings me to my pet peeve. Why must people want to carry around large sums of money? In these days of computer banking and simple exchange of cheques and of course, plastic, there is no need.
I do not have money but I do have a bank card which I would use from time to time to make small withdrawals.  That is why I almost never have money on my person and am accused of being cheap.
For slightly larger transactions I would use cheques. Indeed, the party at the receiving end of the cheque must have a relationship with the person writing the cheque. Some people have been known to write bad cheques and here a credit bureau would be more than useful. However, there is still a charge of obtaining credit by fraud. A person who writes a bad cheque could be hauled before the courts and jailed.
Everyone should have a bank account. In every developed country that I have visited a bank account is compulsory and it works. Guyana should be no different. It is so much easier to have the bank transfer payments to the account of another person.
But I suppose that this reliance on cash has to do with the need to dodge taxes. People who do this have cried many times over. Instead of paying a small sum to the tax man they end up paying every cent to bandits and thieves. I know people who lost millions of dollars after they had hidden money in their homes.
Houses went up in flames and they would tell reporters that their money went up in flames too.
As for the woman who got robbed, she is asking the bank to use its closed circuit cameras to determine who on the inside and who on the outside could have set up and executed the attack.
Money is only paper but its value does not have to reside in the paper. It should reside in the bank which has the capability to effect the transfers.
But even here there is a problem. Some banks claim that they cannot transfer money from one bank to another. I find that strange.

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