Latest update October 12th, 2026 6:30 AM
What a complex and fascinating country Guyana is!
Dear Editor,
I read the news item about the multi-million dollar penny-bank fraud at a primary school and was surprised that youngsters could have sums of $59,000, $78,000, $700,000 and $868.00 held in a ‘penny-bank’. This is serious money, in Guyana terms, and one would expect such sums to be held in a post office account or some such, where depositors’ money should be safe and they would be entitled to the interest accrued on their savings.
More surprising – and alarming – is the fact that a lone teacher was “put in charge of the collection and supervised the entire process and that the teacher can be the signatory to the bank account in which the money has been deposited and has complete access to the cash. Further, nobody checked on her”.
Some may consider it a consolation that the teacher “promised to put back some of the money….”. I remember a lecturer in accountancy saying years ago that the handling of large sums of money in any outfit should involve the rotation of responsible staff periodically, to minimise the risk of fraud.
When we were at primary school, our penny bank was run by the head teacher, and we gave our pennies, along with our bank books, to him on Monday mornings. He recorded the entries and handed them back to us, so that our parents could keep track. We then got our money back at the beginning of the Christmas term – a few dollars, rather than thousands of them.
Let us hope the youngsters get their money back before the teacher is allowed to ‘leave the country on her 10-year US visa’. A mean thing to do – an overall betrayal of trust. Guyana is certainly full of surprises.
Geralda Dennison
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