Craziest country in the world

Jan 27, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I haven’t done the research on other states but it is my opinion that Guyana is the craziest country in the world. I say this after what I was told by a high- ranking staff at the Georgetown City Council. I went to pay my rates/taxes and I ran into him.
I asked why those rich citizens whom the City Council threatened to expose have not been named as yet. I was referring to the City Council’s exclamation that some wealthy individuals and companies are consistent tax defaulters.
He said there is the feeling that if the Council does that, there could be legal implications. I couldn’t understand it. Is he right? If the City Council puts an advertisement in the newspapers publicizing the names of consistent non-compliers, what are the legal ramifications? If you don’t pay your rates and taxes and the City Council demands that you do by public exhortations, can the City Council get into legal hot water?
Why then do companies use the photographs of former employees to inform the public that they are no longer employed? Why do higher-purchase companies publish the names of purchasers that they urgently need to talk to?
I do not believe that the City Council could be sued if it openly states the identities of those who just refuse to pay their dues to the city. That is not the weird part. Under the law, the City Council cannot put on sale the properties of those who refuse to pay their rates/and taxes. The levy on defaulted properties is to referred in law as parate execution. The attorney, Leon Rockcliffe, has written extensively about this anomaly. According to Rockcliffe, parate execution virtually died in 1988 when the Hoyte Administration crippled parate execution with the passage of two Bills – the Municipal and District Councils Act (no 17/1988) and the Local Government Amendment Act (no 18/1988).
This is what makes Guyana the craziest country in the world. As I remarked above, I haven’t done the research on what obtains elsewhere but is there another land in which companies and wealthy individuals refuse to pay the city its taxes and no legal redress could be pursued? I doubt it very much.
The City Council cannot blame the PPP Government. Mayor Hamilton Green was the Prime Minister when those Bills were passed. History has now come back to haunt Mr. Green. It is doubtful that the PPP Government would resuscitate parate execution.
It is quite obvious to a newcomer to social analysis that the present government favours big business. I suspect, too, that many of the culprits are party supporters.
It simply boggles the mind to know that business organizations like the Private Sector Commission can carp about disorder among vendors at the Stabroek Market Square but there is no campaign by the society to get the more comfortable section of Georgetown to fulfill their obligation to the capital.
According to the City Council, the amount owing to it in the absence of parate execution nears a billion dollars. Here is more reason why this county is not only the craziest in the world but the weirdest.
The capital of Georgetown is perhaps the dirtiest city in the world. Its famous cemetery has become a jungle. There is no money to pay garbage collectors, no money to clean alley-ways, no money to patch the gargantuan holes in the main streets, no money to bring modern facilities to the municipal markets, no money to pay the GPL for electricity supplied.
Despite this nightmare, the Georgetown City Council is owed a billion dollars which the law prevents it from collecting from people and companies who refuse to pay “general rate” (which according to Mr. Rockcliffe is the correct designation for what we commonly refer to as “rates and taxes.”)
So here is the situation. You fail to pay GPL, they disconnect your meter. You fail to pay GWI, they cut your pipe. You fail to pay GRA, they take you to court. You fail to get your certificate of fitness from the police, you are charged and you cannot drive your vehicle. But if you fail to pay the city your general rate, no action can be taken against you. Is there another country like Guyana?
The tragedy in all of this is that the City Police will hunt down like dogs, poor vendors who operate outside certain commercial outlets in the shopping districts in downtown Georgetown when those very businesses may not be paying the City Council even one cent in general rate. What an insane country!

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