Looking at the possibility of death on Independence Eve

May 26, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mr. Sherwood Lowe, a lecturer at UG and one of the PNC’s analysts has published a letter that was carried in both independent dailies last Sunday. In his missive, Mr. Lowe complained about an anomaly he saw at the GRA building last week. In fact, I was in front of Mr. Lowe in the line. There were three cashiers. Only one was assigned to the yearly vehicle licence.
The other two served other purposes and were doing nothing since their customers were very slow to come in and weren’t coming in while the queue for road license was getting longer by the seconds.
I walked up to Mr. Lowe and pointed out to him the absurdity of the situation. Mr. Lowe’s response was that it was commonsense to have all the cashiers serve vehicle owners since there was no one there for any other purpose than to purchase the road license. This horrible and primitive approach to management in the 21st century comes 45 years after we have achieved Independence. It is testimony to the ancient society we continue to live in since Independence came in 1966.
In fact, I could pull out any of my essays on Independence written on this date, May 26 since I became a newspaper commentator in 1988 and all, I repeat, all would be pungently relevant today.
We live in an unchanging society where even more than some of the poorest states in the world, our poor are treated in the cruelest of ways and their condition worsens every year. I am taking a chance in making reference to the absurdity I saw at the GRA because the boss man of the GRA, Mr. Khurshid Sattaur came after me last year and may likely to do so again.
I will write because that is the only life I know. Independence anniversary comes and goes every calendar year but we have achieved nothing phenomenal since 1966. The rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer. The rich becomes more powerful. The poor and powerless get more exploited and violated.
The GRA charged a man with holding annual dances for three consecutive years without tax declarations in a small, obscure village in Mahaicony. When he appeared in court, he was terrified. He didn’t understand the nature of the charges, thought they were destructive, and jumped to his death into the Mahaicomy Creek
All the big boys from the Government and the business sector were there when Air Services Limited put on display their latest aircraft on Tuesday. The President, the Prime Minister and Robeson Benn spoke. This writer knows that there is a big businessman at that airport that does not pay property tax.
I challenge Khurshid Sattaur and the GRA to show my editor and the Guyana Press Association past submissions of property taxes for this man and I will bring this column to an immediate end and resign from UG immediately. If he accepts the challenge I will supply the name.
That person was identified a few months ago to a long standing member of the Cabinet. The response was that the Minister of Finance should be given the information. Forty-five years after Independence, a poor labour that held a few dances without telling the tax man was charged and he jumped to his death.
A poor university lecturer like me had to meet a demand by Mr. Sattaur to pay property tax going back eight years. What have we achieved since Independence? If you want to see the failure of post-colonial Guyana and the PPP go any morning at the junction of Albert and Lamaha Streets.
I have to pass that area daily to get to the National Park. Since traffic lights came in 2007, the signals of that site hardly worked. They stopped two years ago. At the rush hour the shadow of death keeps a close watch on his intended victim. I saw that yesterday.
I have written about this madness four times before. I had a close encounter there last year. I had it again yesterday.
It has been forty-five years since Independence came but a simple traffic signal cannot get to work. Forty five years after Independence, the judiciary remains the same. You sue for wrongful dismissal, you die before your case is called up.
As we reach forty-five years of Independence, all we can hear in this country is about Indian versus African. All we see is the mass exodus of our people to other lands. Guyana has gone nowhere since 1966.

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