Just say ‘No’ to perceived injustices

Nov 24, 2012 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Talk about ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. I read two recent letters in your column which brought home to me Guyana’s continuing pitiful situation.
Tony Vieira refers to the day-to-day unsatisfactory living conditions of Lethem and other communities in the Interior and the rubbish piled up in various parts of Georgetown. Earlier this year, on a short visit to
Guyana, I saw this for myself. Apart from the congestion on the pavements and roads, particularly around the Water Street area, I was appalled at the amount of building rubble along Sheriff Street, on the edge of the city, and wondered how people can exist year in and out in such conditions and still remain sane and so cheerful? Or, was it a case of ‘laughing on the outside, crying on the inside’?
As Mr Vieira puts it, “How much will be too much for the Guyanese people? At what point will they say enough”?
Then I read David Shivlall’s letter about his water woes and the disconnection from and reconnection to the system “without a notice or without telling me anything”. Gross disrespect and a lack of suitable official procedures in place.
Households should always be given a final warning to pay and a chance to do so, before disconnection takes place. To me, water is a health and safety issue, and procedures for disconnection should always provide for special circumstances, e.g. households with elderly people and/or children – a civilized arrangement. By my calculation, the chap handed over G$22,000 within two weeks – a sum not to be sneezed at. It is to be hoped that the outfit concerned shows more respect and consideration for its customers in future.
During my 4 1/2 years’ stay in Guyana in the 1990s, I too have always wondered “at the capacity of the Guyanese people [all races] to endure pain”, especially when visiting the main branches of commercial banks.
People would be standing in long queues, mainly to withdraw their own money, while staffers were chatting in corners, leaving several windows unmanned. One day I happened to look up in time to see three men emerge from their rooms and then proceed to hang over the rail, laughing and exchanging comments while looking at the queues below.
I overheard the moans of people in the queues who took time off work, to get some money, and had to choose between leaving without it or face losing their jobs. Their attitude was “What can we do”?
My own ‘enough is enough’ moment came when, having stood in a queue for over 10 minutes, to make a withdrawal, a customer entered the bank with US dollars sticking out from his palm. The cashier, with a grin broader than his, beckoned him forward. I stepped from my queue in front of him, mentioned how long we had been waiting, and asked him to allow me to be served first. He willingly agreed. Honour was satisfied. No doubt others later did likewise.
Customers should be served in turn. (Incidentally, the most efficient queue-handling I have come across so far was in Hong Kong. The Chinese use their hands with great dexterity – hand, eye and brain seem perfectly co-ordinated).
It is a truism ‘we are treated the way we allow ourselves to be treated’. Just say ‘No’ to perceived injustices.
Geralda Dennison

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