Rogue Government

Mar 31, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The consensus among Guyanese in the eighties was that the government of the day was deliberately engaged in robbing the citizens by over-charging them for electricity. Most persons you spoke to thought that it was a way of getting money for the Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC).
To the average person back then, the charge per kilowatts didn’t make sense. After the collapse of GEC, the nation experienced long hours of blackout each day. There was never an exception. Yet your bill was the same as when you lived in the good days of regular supply.
It was a terrible experience back then. How in the mid eighties, you light bill was the same as in the late seventies when blackouts hardly occurred? It was scientific nonsense. It was barefaced robbery by the State.
There was no scientific way a person could have burnt the same kilowatts in the mid eighties when disruptions were daily occurrences as when they did in the late seventies and the bill read the same. A third of the day was without electricity therefore at the end of the month your cost had to go down. But it never did.
My mom, like most citizens, found the situation unbearable. The burden fell on me to seek redress from GEC on Main Street.
It was a daunting task. The lines were so long that by the time the company opened the doors to let in another batch of complainants, the working day was over. I told my mother that we had to accept that we were being robbed and pay the inflated bill because I wasn’t going to continue to trek to GEC only to hear a long explanation that didn’t make sense.
Thirty years later, the situation remains the same. GEC is renamed GPL but state robbery continues to plague GPL customers. We get frequent blackouts but my bill never, I repeat never, goes down.
The political culture of this country is unchanging. Back then, under President Burnham, the unfair billing was to raise money for a bankrupt corporation. The identical situation obtains today. I simply gave up. I cannot afford the time to go to Main Street to complain.
The tale is the same with GWI. It has been a long time since GWI readers came to my home. My pattern of consumption was the same for 2010 following the trend for 2009, 2008 etc.
I cannot recall using more water in 2010 outside my routine. Yet for last year, the bill was much greater than in previous years. The reason is that they guess your output and charge you on that basis. This is state robbery.
It is not a private company or an unscrupulous person that is ripping you off but the State itself. As in the situation with GWI, I refuse to go to its offices to hear the same old story. We just have to accept the dishonest billing.
A country becomes a failed state when the government itself steals money from the citizens to keep dead public entities alive. Guyana has a rogue government with absolutely no shame. Do you know that the Theatre Guild is owed $1.4M (local currency) by the Government of Guyana since Carifesta came here?
The Guild was rented to stage performances during Carifesta and the Ministry of Culture still has an outstanding debt of $1.4. I was told the requests for the money since Carifesta just go unanswered by Dr. Frank Anthony’s Ministry. If you think this is unfair then read on.
A small printery owned by a man and wife is owed for work done for Carifesta. The amount is $900,000. I felt real anger when that couple told me of their plight. The written pleas for payment are never answered.
Contrast this with the hundreds of millions the Government has forked out so far for the private building in which VAT operations are housed. You don’t need a degree in economics to know that the monthly rental for that place has to be millions. Add up the sums since VAT came into existence more than three years ago.
Hundreds of millions are spent on the Laptop and climate change programs at the Office of the President but a poor couple cannot get their money for goods supplied to the Carifesta Secretariat. How can any sane person go into an election booth and cast a ballot for a government that literally robs its citizens.
The election campaign is on and one expects that these injustices will be highlighted by the opposition parties. It just sickens the mind and torments the soul.

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