The first time my wife saw the inside of a police station

Jul 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of these days, I will introduce you to my wife. All, without exception, who have met her, have said to her; “How you marry that crazy guy, Freddie Kissoon?” And they are right. She is the exact opposite of me—quiet in demeanour and deportment, soft-spoken, uninterested in politics, and a human being that could never harm anyone in this life.
She never saw the inside of a police station until December 2010. She came into the Brickdam station twice when Mark Benschop and I were arrested for protest against the Le Repentir dumpsite.
We spent three days and two nights incarcerated in that hell hole. After I came home, she told me that she met nice police officers, both male and female. She said they were polite, professional and did not portray the bad image people have of the police in Guyana.
I have met some exceptionally nice police personnel myself. The same experience I have had at the Georgetown Public Hospital and the University of Guyana.
The comforting souls in these places do not reflect the true state of the three institutions.
My favourite German word, “untergang” that I got from the title of a film depicting Hitler’s final days in his bunker can best be used to describe the state of affairs at the University of Guyana (UG), the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) and the police (GPF). It means “breakdown.’
The situation at the three institutions is not identical but the failure of all three is systemic or structural. Choose one of the two adjectives that best outlines the untergang.
No one person can be blamed for the deplorability that has taken over UG, GPHC and the GPF. At UG, the Government changed the Vice-Chancellor that this writer confronted for over seven years. Under his replacement, things have remained as they are or perhaps got worse.
The same analysis applies to the Chancellor too. UG’s malady is endemic. A non-PPP Government will not be able to bring solutions even in ten years’ time.
With that kind of destruction that UG endured over the past twenty years, early fixing is not on the cards.
Of the trio under assessment here, I would put my own workplace, as having a more severe form of untergang. There is no way, using modern classifications, can UG be described as a university. The resources are not there to allow it to continue with that accreditation.
It is indeed a mockery to retain UG’s accreditation. Just goes to show how the world is a failure and you can’t trust it. Next is the GPHC. The management of the hospital has replied to my column on the institution (see Tuesday’s piece)
Let me say emphatically, it would be a deplorable act of ingratitude to say that the hospital’s CEO Mike Khan has not gone out of his way to help this writer.
He has done it for me when I was attacked and beaten in April 2004; he has also done it for many of my friends and my mother-in-law. But GPHC has formidable problems. Perhaps frightening may also be a relevant term.
I noticed that none of the essential complaints in my article was confronted by the response.
I find it unacceptable that a citizen would see a specialist at the hospital on a Monday, then after being sent for x-rays and blood tests would be left unattended because of a long wait for the tests the doctor left. Basic management principles should be applied.
Another doctor, the same day or the next day, will take a look at the x-rays and blood tests. How can GPHC be happy with a system like that? There must be bureaucratic continuity. I was stunned when my nephew returned and was simply told; “The doctor is gone you have to come back next Monday.”
I was told that the reason why there is a long daily meeting in the Plaster of Paris room, is to discuss the charts of patients who came the day before.
But my knowledge contradicts this. Once you see the POP doctor and you are looked after, you have a future appointment. Seldom do patients return the next day.
The doctors are spending valuable time with the charts of patients that they will not see on the day of their meeting.
My nephew had a bad broken leg, was treated and given another date a week later.
Doctors are not management specialists. Let doctors practice medicine and let management experts plan bureaucracy. It is called division of labour. I worked at three newspapers and never saw a manager who was a journalist.

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The first time my wife saw the inside of a police station

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