A waste of time and computerisation

Apr 21, 2011 Editorial

In the not too distant future computers will be a common feature in Guyana. If President Bharrat Jagdeo has his way then every household will have a computer. At present a department operating out of Office of the President is hell bent on placing computers in the homes of 90,000 poor families. In the first year the drive is to provide 27,000 computers.
Already there is the training of people across the country in Information Technology. People who have been retrenched or whose place of employment had to be closed for one reason or the other have been directed to computers at Government expense. The government has also directed single-parent women to this area because the future hinges on computer technology.
Salaries from the Ministries are now routinely done by computer; the records of every employee are computerized; the National Insurance Scheme is expected to have computerized records of every contributor—there is a problem with records for eight or nine years; flight manifests are computer generated as are airline bookings, and the list goes on.
Today, people can stay at home and conduct banking transactions in any part of the world; businessmen can place and conclude deals via the computer and of course, students can study online. Guyana recently launched a programme designed to make students learn via the computer. The benefits are widespread and the use of the computer is pervasive.
A few years ago the Guyana Revenue Authority incorporated what it called the Total revenue Integration Processing System (TRIPS). Every financial transaction within the system could be duly monitored and is recorded in every finance-controlling entity in the government system.
For example, if a Customs officer is to clear a container, the transaction could be monitored by a variety of people, including the Accountant General and the Auditor General. This is how it should be. Other entities operating in Guyana are also showing us how insidious the computer could be. To apply for a visa to North America, all one has to do is to go online and make that application.
The people inside the embassies would merely have to deal with the applicant who would, from the time the filing is recorded, would have been provided with a number and an appointment date. This reduces the number of people who must crowd the embassies of High Commissions. And no longer are there long lines outside the embassies, thanks to the computer.
Guyana lags, however, in the use of this now vital tool. Each day hundreds turn up at the Passport Office when they should simply have been made to apply online and be informed of a date when they could turn up for their travel document. Instead people must spend hours either registering their application or waiting to collect.
It is no different at the Licence Revenue Office. Every single Guyanese must turn up there to renew his or her vehicle licence. People have been reporting there for days without being able to complete their transactions. Those from the Essequibo Coast must pay at least $5,000 for every day they report to the Licence Revenue Office.
People must also come from as far as the Corentyne, from every part of the Demerara Coast, and from every conceivable part of the country at great cost and with no certainty that their business would be completed.
One would have expected that having assigned a Taxpayers Identification Number (TIN) to just about everyone who must interface with the Guyana Revenue Authority, and given the extent of computerisation one would have believed that process of registering would have been done from within the confines of the home. If, for example the incorrect TIN would have been entered against a name then there would have been no transaction.
Perhaps it is to the good that the population is small because given the system there would have been the case of untold unlicenced vehicles on the streets. And we have not examined the situation at the General Registrar’s Office to which people must apply for birth, marriage and death certificates.

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A waste of time and computerisation

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