A country of contradictions

Jun 18, 2011 Editorial

Guyana is a country of contradictions. On the one hand there are the positive signs of development. Infrastructure development is unprecedented; there is a focus on education improvement to the extent that we could see computers in every school in the near future; the construction of roads cannot be denied and there is a drive to produce hydroelectric power.
The government is also trying its utmost to produce the skilled personnel to staff the institutions. The country has more doctors than at any time in its history. More are coming. Health centres are springing up around the country and in increasing numbers there are mobile health teams attending to the needs of those who are either afraid or too scared to visit medical institutions.
We have seen the burgeoning housing schemes, particularly in Demerara. In less than a decade we have seen cane lands transformed into large residential communities. Cases in point are Eccles, Diamond, La Parfaite Harmonie, and Tuschen. These, in turn, have led to the opening of commercial banks. Diamond, for example, has what can only be described as state of the art commercial banks.
The very development that is promoting Guyana has seen branches of the commercial banks where none existed simply because businesses sprang up in those communities.
There is also a move to have information technology become the driving force in the country. A call centre, certainly the first of many, is there to provide employment for people who would normally have been either languishing at home or operating behind some store counters. And more bandwidth is coming.
But there are the contradictions. While businesses are expanding there are the criminal elements who frustrate every development effort, either by targeting the establishment as was the case recently in Regent Street in broad daylight, or by targeting the customers.
They manage to escape the law because there has not been a corresponding increase in law enforcement personnel. The prisons which are supposed to be the custodians of the social deviants are also understaffed. It is as if the police and the prison service cannot attract people because of the pay they offer.
Earlier this week, a report from the New Amsterdam prisons stated that a mere three officers were on duty when four notorious criminals broke out of the jail. In the first instance, the number of men who escaped, happened to be more than the people on duty.
In the second instance, given the developments in the area of women liberation, one of those guards happened to be pregnant. Surely, if one is pursuing development one would also look at the areas of weakness. And one such area is actually attracting people to serve in positions that would protect the development boom.
For more than a decade the Guyana Police Force has been complaining that it is under-strength. Three years ago the police commissioner announced that his force was thirty-three per cent below strength. The Guyana Prison Service is also below strength and seriously so. The authorities say that men are not coming forward with the result that there is a preponderance of women to supervise hundreds of hostile and ant-social men.
We are already aware that the preponderance of women in the schools and the growing numbers of single-parent women-led households may be the factor that is spawning the crime situation. Young men are simply out of control because they know that the women are incapable of applying that firm hand when it comes to teenaged males.
These are the men whom some women encounter later in life. These are the men in the jails. Surely the authorities could recognize the problems and move to correct the situation. The pursuit of development has shown that money is no problem.
They should use some of that money where it is needed—to staff the police force, the prisons and the schools with the adequately qualified people, even if it means running the risk of being accused of sexism.

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